-£"- 



V, 



e^/fjf?* 



L S. READ, 

HIGHLAND SPRW3S, 

Henrico Co,, Vt, 









IS Jf - O WHLAND SPRINGS, 



Henrico Co.. Vt. 




HENRY WARD BEECHER. 



L E C T U E E S 



TO 



YOUNG MEN 



ON 



VARIOUS IMPORTANT SUBJECTS 



BY 

HENRY WARD BEECHEE 

ii 



NEW YORK 

JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER 

1890 






, ~^h p r 






CONTENTS 



LECTURE I. 
Industry and Idleness 7 

LECTURE II. 
Twelve Causes of Dishonesty 27 

LECTURE III. 
Six Warnings 45 

LECTURE IV. 
The Portrait Gallery , • 61 

LECTURE V. 
Gamblers and Gambling 79 

LECTURE VI. 
The Strange Woman 101 

LECTURE VII. 
Popular Amusements 129 



PREFACE. 



Having watched the courses of those who seduce the 
young — their arts, their blandishments, their pretences ; hav- 
ing witnessed the beginning and consummation of ruin, almost 
in the same year, of many young men, naturally well disposed, 
whose downfall began with the appearances of innocence ; I 
felt an earnest desire, if I could, to raise the suspicion of the 
young, and to direct their reason to the arts by which they are, 
with such facility, destroyed. 

I ask every young man who may read this book, not to 
submit his judgment to mine, not to hate because I denounce, 
nor blindly to follow me ; but to weigh my reasons, that he 
may form his own judgment. I only claim the place of a com- 
panion ; and that I may gain his ear, I have sought to present 
truth in those forms which best please the young ; and though 
I am not without hope of satisfying the aged and the wise, my 
whole thought has been to carry with me the intelligent sym- 
pathy Of YOUNG MEN. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



It is proper to remark, that many of the statements in these 
Lectures, which may seem severe, or overdrawn, in New Eng- 
land, are literally true in the West. Insensibility to public 
indebtedness, gambling among the members of the Bar, the 
ignoble arts of Politicians, — I know not if such things are found 
at the East, — but within one year past an edition of three 
thousand copies of these Lectures has been distributed through 
the West, and it has been generally noticed in the papers, 
and I have never heard objections from any quarter, that the 
canvas has been too strongly colored. 



LECTURE I 



Give us this day our daily bread. Matt. vi. 11. 

This we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should 
he eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you disor- 
derly, working not at all, but are busyuodies. Now them that are 
such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with 
quietness they work, and eat their own bread. 2 Thess. iii. 10, 12. 

The bread which we solicit of God, he gives us through 
our own industry. Prayer sows it, and Industry reap sit. 

As Industry is habitual activity in some useful pursuit, 
so, not only inactivity, but also all efforts without the 
design of usefulness, are of the nature of Idleness. The 
supine sluggard is no more indolent than the bustling do- 
nothing. Men may walk much, and read much, and talk 
much, and pass the day without an unoccupied moment, 
and yet be substantially idle ; because Industry requires, 
at least, the intention of usefulness. But gadding, gaz- 
ing, lounging, mere pleasure- mo ngering, reading for the 
relief of ennui, — these are as useless as sleeping, or doz- 
ing, or the stupidity of a surfeit. 

There are many grades of idleness ; and veins of it 
run through the most industrious life. We shall indulge 
in some descriptions of the various classes of idlers, and 
leave the reader to judge, if he be an indolent man, to 
which class he belongs. 

1. The lazy-man. He is of a very ancient pedigree ; 
for his family is minutely described by Solomon : How 
long wilt thou sleep, sluggard ? when wilt thou awake 
out of sleep? This is the language of impatience; the 
speaker has been trying to awaken him — pulling, push- 
ing, rolling him over, and shouting in his ear ; but all to 
no purpose. He soliloquizes, whether it is possible for 
the man ever to wake up ! At length, the sleeper drawls 
out a dozing petition to be let alone : " Yet a little sleep, 
a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep ; " and 
the last words confusedly break into a snore, — that som- 

(7) 



8 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

nolent lullaby of repose. Long ago the birds have fin- 
ished their matins, the sun has advanced full high, the 
dew has gone from the grass, and the labors of Industry- 
are far in progress, when our sluggard, awakened by his 
very efforts to maintain sleep, slowly emerges to perform 
life's great duty of feeding — with him, second only in im- 
portance to sleep. And now, well rested, and suitably 
nourished, surely he will abound in labor. Nay, the 
sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold. It is yet 
early spring ; there is ice in the north ; and the winds 
are hearty : his tender skin shrinks from exposure, and 
he waits for milder days, — envying the residents of tropi- 
cal climates, where cold never comes, and harvests wave 
spontaneously. He is valiant at sleeping and at the 
trencher ; but for other courage, the slothful man saith, 
there is a lion without ; I shall be slain in the street. He 
has not been out to see ; but he heard a noise, and reso- 
lutely betakes himself to prudence. Under so thriving a 
manager, so alert in the morning, so busy through the 
day, and so enterprising, we might anticipate the thrift 
of his husbandry. I went by the field of the slothful and by 
the vineyard of the man void of understanding ; and lo I 
it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered 
the face of it, and its stone wall was broken down. To 
complete the picture, only one thing more is wanted, — a 
description of his house, — and then we should have, at 
one view, the lazy-man, his farm, and house. Solomon 
has given us that also : By much slothfidness the building 
decayeth ; and through idleness of the hands the house 
droppeth through. Let all this be put together, and pos- 
sibly some reader may find an unpleasant resemblance to 
his own affairs. 

He sleeps long and late, he wakes to stupidity, with in- 
dolent eyes sleepily rolling over neglected work; ne- 
glected because it is too cold in spring, and too hot in 
summer, and too laborious at all times, — a great coward 
in danger, and therefore very blustering in safety. His 
lands run to waste, his fences are dilapidated, his crops 
chiefly of weeds and brambles ; a shattered house, the 
side leaning over as if wishing, like its owner, to lie down 
to sleep; the chimney tumbling down, the roof breaking 
in, with moss and grass sprouting in its crevices; the well 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS. 9 

without pump or windlass, a trap for their children. 
This is the very castle of Indolence. 

2. Another idler as useless, but vastly more active than 
the last, attends closely to every one's business, except 
his own. His wife earns the children's bread, and his ; 
procures her own raiment and his ; she procures the 
wood ; she procures the water, while he, with hands in 
his pocket, is busy watching the building of a neighbor's 
barn ; or advising another how to trim and train his vines ; 
or he has heard of sickness in a friend's family, and is 
there, to suggest a hundred cures, and to do everything 
but to help ; he is a spectator of shooting-matches, a 
stickler for a ring and fair play at every fight. He 
knows all the stories of all the families that live in the 
town. If lie can catch a stranger at the tavern in a 
rainy day, he pours out a strain of information, a patter- 
ing of words, as thick as the rain-drops out of doors. He 
has good advice to everybody, how to save, how to make 
money, how to do everything ; he can tell the saddler 
about his trade, he gives advice to the smith about his 
work, and goes over with him when it is forged to see the 
carriage- maker put it on, suggests improvements, advises 
this paint or that varnish, criticises the finish, or praises 
the trimmings. He is a violent reader of newspapers, 
almanacs, and receipt books ; and with scraps of history 
and mutilated anecdotes, he faces the very school master, 
and gives up only to the volubility of the oily village law- 
yer, — few have the hardihood to match him. 

And thus every day lie bustles through his multifar- 
ious idleness, and completes his circle of visits, as regu- 
larly as the pointers of a. clock visit each figure on the 
dial plate ; but alas ! the clock forever tells man the use- 
ful lesson of time passing steadily away, and returning 
never ; but what useful thing do these busy buzzing idlers 
perform ? 

3. We introduce another idler. He follows no voca- 
tion ; he only follows those who do. Sometimes he 
sweeps along the streets, with consequential gait ; some- 
times perfumes it with wasted odors of tobacco. He also 
haunts sunny benches, or breezy piazzas. His business 
is to see ; his desire to be seen, and no one fails to see 
him, — so gaudily dressed, his bat sitting aslant upon a 



10 LECTUKES TO YOUXG ."IEX. 

wilderness of hair, like a bird half startled from its ne.<t, 
and every thread arranged to provoke attention. He is 
a man of honor ; not that he keeps his word or shrinks 
from meanness. He defrauds his laundress, his tailor, 
and his landlord. He drinks and smokes at other men's 
expense. He gambles and swears, and fights — when he 
is too drunk to be afraid ; but still he is a man of honor, 
for he has whiskers and looks fierce, wears mustachios 
and says, " upon my honor, si? ;" " do you doubt my 
honor, sir ? " 

Thus he appears by day ; by night he does not appear ; 
he may be dimly seen fitting ; his voice may be heard 
loud in the carousal of some refection cellar, or above the 
songs and uproar of a midnight returns, and home stag- 
gering. 

4. The next of this brotherhood excites our pity. He 
began life most thriftily ; for his rising family he was 
gathering an ample subsistence ; but, involved in other 
men's affairs, he went down in their ruin. Late in life 
he begins once more, and at length just secure of an 
easy competence, his ruin is compassed again. He sits 
down quietly under it, complains of no one, envies no 
one, refuseth the cup, and is even more pure in morals, 
than in better days. He moves on from day to day, as 
one who walks under a spell, — it is the spell of despon- 
dency, which nothing can disenchant or arouse. He 
neither seeks work nor refuses it. He wanders among 
men a dreaming gazer, poorly clad, always kind, always 
irresolute, able to plan nothing for himself, nor to execute 
what others have planned for him. He lives and he dies 
a discouraged man, and the most harmless and excusable 
of all idlers. 

5. I have not mentioned the fashionable idler, whose 
riches defeat every object for which God gave him birth. 
He has a fine form, and manly beauty, and the chief end 
of life is to display them. With notable diligence he 
ransacks the market for rare am*, curious fabrics, for 
costly seals, and chains, and rings. A coat poorly fitted 
is the unpardonable sin of Ins creed. He meditates upon 
cravats, employs a profound discrimination in selecting a 
hat, or a vest, and adopts his conclusions upon the taste- 
fulness of a button or a collar, with the deliberation of a 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS. 11 

statesman. Thus caparisoned, he saunters in fashionable 
galleries, or flaunts in stylish equipage, or parades the 
streets with simpering belles, or delights their itching 
ears with compliments of flattery, or with choicely culled 
scandal. He is a reader of fictions, if they be not too 
substantial ; a writer of cards and billet-doux, and is 
especially conspicuous in albums. Gay and frivolous, 
rich and useless, polished till the enamel is worn off, his 
whole life serves only to make him an animated puppet 
of pleasure. He is as corrupt in imagination as he is 
refined in manners ; he is as selfish in private as he is 
generous in public; and even what he gives to another, 
is given for iiis own sake. He worships where fashion 
worships, to-day at the theatre, to-morrow at the church, 
as either exhibits the whitest hand, or the most polished 
actor. A gaudy, active and indolent butterfly, he flutters 
without industry from flower to flower, until summer 
closes, and frosts sting him, and he sinks down and dies, 
unthought of and unremembered. 

6. One other portrait should be drawn of a business 
man, who wishes to subsist by his occupation while he 
attends to everything else. If a sporting club goes to the 
woods, he must go. He has set his line in every hole in 
the river, and dozed in a summer day under every tree 
along its bank. He rejoices in a riding party — a sleigh- 
ride — a summer-frolic — a winter's glee. He is every- 
body's friend — universally good-natured, — forever busy 
where it will do him no good, and remiss where his inter- 
ests require activity. He takes amusement for his main 
business, which other men employ as a relaxation; and 
the serious labor of life, which other men are mainly 
employed in, he knows only as a relaxation. After a 
few years he fails, his good nature is something clouded, 
and as age sobers his buoyancy, without repairing his 
profitless habits, he soon sinks to a lower grade of lazi- 
ness, and to ruin. 

It would be endless to describe the wiles of idleness — 
how it creeps upon men, how secretly it mingles with 
their pursuits, how much time it purloins from the 
scholar, from the professional man, and from the artisan. 
It steals minutes, it clips off the edges of hours, and at 
length takes possession of days. Where it has its will, it 



12 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

sinks and drowns employment ; but where necessity, or 
ambition, or duty resists such violence, then indolence 
makes labor heavy; scatters the attention ; puts us to our 
tasks with wandering thoughts, with irresolute purpose, 
and with dreamy visions. Thus when it may, it plucks 
out liours and rules over them ; and where this may not 
be, it lurks around them to impede the sway of industry, 
and turn her seeming toils to subtle idleness. Against so 
mischievous an enchantress, we should be duly armed. I 
shall, therefore, describe the advantages of Industry, and 
the evils of Indolence. 

1. A hearty Industry promotes happiness. Some men 
of the greatest industry are unhappy from infelicity of 
disposition ; they are morose, or suspicious, or envious. 
Such qualities make happiness impossible under any cir- 
cumstances. 

Health is the platform on w T hich all happiness must be 
built. Good appetite, good digestion, and good sleep, are 
the elements of health, and Industry confers them. As 
use polishes metals, so labor the faculties, until the body 
performs its unimpeded functions with elastic cheerfulness 
and hearty enjoyment. 

Buoyant spirits are an element of happiness, and ac- 
tivity produces them ; but they fly away from sluggish- 
ness, as fixed air from open w r ine. Men's spirits are like 
water, which sparkles when it runs, but stagnates in still 
pools, and is mantled with green, and breeds corruption 
and filth. The applause of conscience, the self-respect 
of pride, the consciousness of independence, a manly joy 
of usefulness, the consent of every faculty of the mind to 
one's occupation, and their gratification in it — these con- 
stitute a happiness superior to the fever-flashes of vice in 
its brightest moments. After an experience of ages, 
which has taught nothing from this, men should have 
learned, that satisfaction is not the product of excess, or 
of indolence, or of riches ; but of industry, temperance, 
and usefulness. Every village has instances which ought 
to teach young men, that he, who goes aside from the sim- 
plicity of nature, and the purity of virtue, to wallow iu 
excesses, carousals, and surfeits, at length misses the er- 
rand of his life ; and sinking with shattered body prema- 
turely to a dishonored grave, mourns that he mistook ex- 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS. 13 

hilaration for satisfaction, and abandoned the very home 
of happiness, when he forsook the labors of useful Indus- 
try. 

The poor man with Industry, is happier than the rich 
man in Idleness ; for labor makes the one more manly, 
and riches unmans the other. The slave is often happier 
than the master, who is nearer undone by license than his 
vassal by toil. Luxurious couches — plushy carpets from 
oriental looms — pillows of eider-down — carriages con- 
trived with cushions and springs to make motion imper- 
ceptible, — is the indolent master of these as happy as the 
slave that wove the carpet, the Indian who hunted the 
northern flock, or the servant who drives the pampered 
steeds ? Let those who envy the gay revels of city idlers, 
and pine for their masquerades, their routs, and their 
operas, experience for a week the lassitude of their sa- 
tiety, the unarousable torpor of their life when not under 
a fiery stimulus, their desperate ennui, and restless som- 
nolency, they would gladly flee from their haunts as from 
a land of cursed enchantment. 

2. Industry is the parent of thrift. In the over-bur- 
dened states of Europe, the severest toil often only suffices to 
make life a wretched vacillation between food and famine ; 
but in America, Industry is prosperity. 

Although God has stored the world with an endless 
variety of riches for man's wants, he has made them all 
accessible only to Industry. The food we eat, the rai- 
ment which covers us, the house which protects, must be 
secured by diligence. To tempt man yet more to Indus- 
try, every product of the earth has a susceptibility of 
improvement ; so that man not only obtains the gifts of 
nature at the price of labor, but these gifts become more 
precious as we bestow upon them greater skill and culti- 
vation. The wheat and maize which crown our ample 
fields, were food fit but for birds, before man perfected them 
by labor. The fruits of the forest and the hedge, scarcely 
tempting to the extremest hunger, after skill lias dealt 
with them and transplanted them to the orchard and the 
garden, allure every sense with the richest colors, odors, 
and flavors. The world is full of germs which man is set 
to develop ; and there is scarcely an assignable limit, to 



14 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

which the hand of skill and labor may not bear the pow- 
ers of nature. 

The scheming speculations of the last ten years have 
produced an aversion among the young to the slow ac- 
cumulations of ordinary Industry, and fired them with a 
conviction that shrewdness, cunning, and bold ventures, 
are a more manly way to wealth. There is a swarm of 
men, bred in the heats of adventurous times, whose 
thoughts scorn pence and farthings, and who humble 
themselves to speak of dollars ; — hundreds and thousands 
are their words. They are men of great operations. 
Forty thousand dollars is a moderate profit of a single 
speculation. They mean to own the Bank ; and to look 
down, before they die, upon Astor and Girard. The 
young farmer becomes almost ashamed to meet his school- 
mate, whose stores line whole streets, whose stocks are in 
every bank and company, and whose increasing money is 
already well nigh inestimable. But if the butterfly de- 
rides the bee in summer, he was never known to do it in 
the lowering days of autumn. 

Every few years, Commerce has its earthquakes, and 
the tall and toppling warehouses which haste ran up, are 
first shaken down. The hearts of men fail them for 
fear ; and the suddenly rich, made more suddenly poor, 
fill the land with their loud laments. But nothing 
strange has happened. When the whole story of com- 
mercial disasters is told, it is only found out that they, 
who slowly amassed the gains of useful Industry, built 
upon a rock; and they, who flung together the imaginary 
millions of commercial speculations, built upon the sand. 
When times grew dark, and the winds came, and the 
floods descended and beat upon them both — the rock sus- 
tained the one, and the shifting sand let down the other. If 
a young man has no higher ambition in life than riches, 
Industry — plain, rugged, brow-n-faced, homely clad, old- 
fashioned Industry, must be courted. Young men are 
pressed with a most unprofitable haste. They wish to reap 
before they have ploughed or sown. Everything is driving 
at such a rate, that they have become giddy. Laborious 
occupations are avoided. Money is to be earned in gen- 
teel leisure, with the help of fine clothes, and by the soft 
seductions of smooth hair and luxuriant whiskers. 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS. 15 

Parents, equally wild, foster the delusion. Shall the 
promising lad be apprenticed to his uncle, the blacksmith? 
The sisters think the blacksmith so very smutty ; the 
mother shrinks from the ungentility of his swarthy labor; 
the father, weighing the matter prudentially deeper, finds 
that a whole life had been spent in earning the uncle's 
property. These sagacious parents, wishing the tree to 
bear its fruit before it lias ever blossomed, regard the long 
delay of industrious trades as a fatal objection to them. 
The son, then, must be a rich merchant, or a popular 
lawyer, or a broker ; and these, only as the openings to 
speculation. 

Young business men are often educated in two very 
unthrifty species of contempt ; a contempt for small 
gains, and a contempt for hard labor. To do one's own 
errands, to wheel one's own barrow, to be seen with a 
bundle, bag, or burden, is disreputable. Men are so 
sharp now-a-days, that they can compass by their shrewd 
heads, what their fathers used to do with their heads and 
hands. 

3. Industry gives character and credit to the young. 
The reputable portions of society have maxims of pru- 
dence, by which the young are judged and admitted to 
their good opinion. Does he regard his ivord f Is he 
industrious ? Is he economical ? Is he free from immoral 
habits ? The answer which a young man's conduct gives 
to these questions, settles his reception among good men. 
Experience has shown that the other good qualities of 
veracity, frugality, and modesty, are apt to be associated 
with industry. A prudent man would scarcely be per- 
suaded that a listless, lounging fellow, would be economi- 
cal or trust-worthy. An employer w r ould judge wisely, 
that w r here there was little regard for time, or for occu- 
pation, there would be as little, upon temptation, for 
honesty or veracity. Pilferings of the till, and robber- 
ies, are fit deeds for idle clerks, and lazy apprentices. 
Industry and knavery are sometimes found associated; 
but men wonder at it, as at a strange thing. The epithets 
of society, which betoken its experience, are all in favor 
of Industry. Thus, the terms "a hard working man ; " 
"and industrious man;" ''a laborious artisan ;" are em- 
ployed to mean, an honest man ; a trust-worthy man. 



16 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

I may here, as well as anywhere, impart the secret of 
what is called good and bad luck. There are men who, 
supposing Providence to have an implacable spite against 
them, bemoan in the poverty of a wretched old age the 
misfortunes of their lives. Luck forever ran against 
thein, and for others. One, with a good profession, lost 
his luck in the river, wmere he idled away his time a 
fishing, when he should have been in the office. An- 
other, with a good trade, perpetually burnt up his luck 
by his hot temper, which provoked all his employers to 
leave him. Another, with a lucrative business, lost his 
luck by amazing diligence at everything but his business. 
Another, who steadily followed his trade, as steadily fol- 
lowed his bottle. Another, who was honest and constant 
to his work, erred by perpetual misjudgments; — he lacked 
discretion. Hundreds lose their luck by indorsing ; by 
sanguine speculations ; by trusting fraudulent men ; and 
by dishonest gains. A man never has good luck who has 
a bad wife. I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, 
prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest 
who complained of bad luck. A good character, good 
habits, and iron industry, are impregnable to the assaults 
of all the ill luck that fools ever dreamed of. But when 
I see a tatterdemalion, creeping out of a grocery late in 
the forenoon, with his hands stuck into his pockets, the 
rim of his hat turned up, and the crown knocked in, I 
know he has had bad luck, — for the worst of all luck, is 
to be a sluggard, a knave, or a tippler. 

Industry is a substitute for Genius. Where one or 
more faculties exist in the highest state of development 
and activity, — as the faculty of music in Mozart, — inven- 
tion in Fulton, — ideality in Milton, — we call their pos- 
sessor a genius. But a genius is usually understood to be 
a creature of such rare facility of mind, that he can do 
anything without labor. According to the popular notion, 
he learns without study, and knows without learning. He 
is eloquent without preparation ; exact without calcula- 
tion ; and profound without reflection. "While ordinary 
men toil for knowledge by reading, by comparison, and 
by minute research, a genius is supposed to receive it as 
the mind receives dreams. His mind is like a vast 
cathedral, through whose colored windows the sunlight 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS. 17 

streams, painting the aisles with the varied colors of 
brilliant pictures. Such minds may exist. 

So far as my observations have ascertained the species, 
they abound in academies, colleges, and Thespian 
societies ; in village debating clubs ; in coteries of young 
artists, and among young professional aspirants. They 
are to be known by a reserved air, excessive sensitive- 
ness, and utter indolence ; by very long hair, and very 
open shirt collars ; by the reading of much wretched 
poetry, and the writing of much, yet more wretched ; by 
being very conceited, very affected, very disagreeable, 
and very useless : — beings whom no man wants for 
friend, pupil, or companion. 

The occupations of the great man, and of the common 
man, are necessarily, for the most part, the same; for the 
business of life is made up of minute affairs, requiring 
only judgment and diligence. • A high order of intellect 
is required for the discovery and defence of truth ; but 
this is an unfrequent task. Where the ordinary wants 
of life once require recondite principles, they will need 
the application of familiar truths a thousand times. 
Those who enlarge the bounds of knowledge, must push 
out with bold adventure beyond tlie common walks of 
men. But only a few pioneers are needed for the largest 
armies, and a few profound men in each occupation may 
herald the advance of all the business of society. The 
vast bulk of men are required to discharge the homely 
duties of life, and they have less need of genius than of 
intellectual Industry and patient Enterprise. Young men 
should observe, that those who take the honors and emo- 
luments of mechanical crafts, of commerce and of profes- 
sional life, are rather distinguished for a sound judgment 
and a close application, than for a brilliant genius. In 
the ordinary business of life, Industry can do anything 
which Genius can do ; and very many things which it 
cannot. Genius is usually impatient of application, 
irritable, scornful of men's dullness, squeamish of petty 
disgusts : — it loves a conspicuous place, a short work, and 
a large reward. It loathes the sweat of toils, the vexa- 
tions of life, and the dull burden of care. 

Industry has a firmer muscle, is less annoyed by 
delays and repulses, and, like water, bends itself to the 
2 



18 LECTURES TO YOLXG MEN. 

shape of the soil over which it flows; and if checked, 
will not rest, but accumulates, and mines a passage 
beneath, or seeks a side-race, or rises above and over- 
flows the obstruct lou. What Genius perforins at one 
impulse, Industry gains by a succession of blows. In 
ordinary matters they differ only in rapidity of execution, 
and are upon one level before men, — who see the result 
but not the process. 

It is admirable lo know that those things which in skill, 
in art, and in learning, the whole world has been unwil- 
ling to let die, have not only been the conceptions of 
genius, but the products of toil. The masterpieces of 
antiquity, as well in literature, as in art, are known to 
have received their extreme finish, from an almost incredi- 
ble continuance of labor upon them. I do not remember 
a book in all the departments of learning, nor a scrap in 
literature, nor a work in all the schools of art, fiom 
which its author has derived a permanent renow r n, that it 
is not known to have been long and patiently elaborated. 
Genius needs Industry, as much as Industry needs 
Genius. If only Milton's imagination could have con- 
ceived his visions, his consummate industry only could 
have carved the immortal lines which enshrine them. If 
only Newton's mind could reach out to the secrets of 
Nature, even his could only do it by the homeliest toil. 
The works of Bacon are not midsummer-night dreams, 
but, like coral islands, they have risen from the depths of 
truth, and formed their broad surf aces above the ocean by 
the minutest accretions of persevering labor. The con- 
ceptions of Michael Angelo would have perished like a 
night's phantasy, had not his industry given them per- 
manence. 

From enjoying the pleasant walks of Industry we turn 
reluctantly to explore the paths of Indolence. 

All degrees of Indolence incline a man to rely upon 
others, and not upon himself; to eat their bread and not 
his own. His carelessness is somebody's loss; his 
neglect is somebody's downfall ; his promises are a per- 
petual stumbling block to all who trust them. If he bor- 
rows, the article remains borrowed; if he begs and gets, 
it is as the letting out of waters — no one knows when it 
will stop. He spoils your work ; disappoints yourexpec- 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS. 19 

tations ; exhausts your patience ; eats up your substance ; 
abuses your confidence ; and hangs a dead weight upon 
all your plans ; and the very best thing an honest man 
can do. with a lazy man, is to get rid of hi in. Solomon 
says : Bray a fool with a pestile, in a mortar with wheat, 
yet will not his folly depart from him. He does not 
mention what kind of a fool he meant ; but as he speaks 
of a fool by preeminence, I take it for granted he meant 
a lazy man; and I am the more inclined to the opinion, 
from another expression of his experience : As vinegar 
to the teeth, and smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to 
them that send him. 

Indolence is a great spendthrift. An indolently in- 
clined young man, can neither make nor keep property. 
I have high authority for this: He that is slothful in his 
tvork, is brother to him that is a great waster. 

When Satan would put ordinary men to a crop of mis- 
chief, like a wise husbandman, he clears the ground and 
prepares it for seed ; but he finds the idle man already 
prepared, and he has scarcely the trouble of sowing ; for 
vices, like weeds, ask little strewing, except what the 
wind gives their ripe and winged seeds, shaking and scat- 
tering them all abroad. Indeed, lazy men may fitly be 
likened to a tropical prairie, over which the wind of 
temptation perpetually blows, drifting every vagrant seed 
from hedge and hill, and which — without a moment's rest 
through all the year — waves its rank harvest of luxuri- 
ant weeds. 

First, the imagination will be haunted with unlawful 
visitants. Upon the outskirts of towns are shattered 
houses, abandoned by reputable persons. They are not 
empty, because all the day silent ; thieves, vagabonds 
and villains haunt them, in joint possession with rats, 
bats, and vermin. Such are idle men's imaginations — 
full of unlawful company. 

The imagination is closely related to the passions, and 
fires them with its heat. The day-dreams of indolent 
youth, glow each hour with warmer colors, and bolder 
adventures. The imagination fashions scenes of en- 
chantment, in which the passions revel ; and it leads 
them out, in shadow at first, to deeds which soon they 
will seek in earnest. The brilliant colors of far-away 



20 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

clouds, are but the colors of the storm ; the salacious 
day-dreams of indolent men, rosy at first and distant, 
deepen every day, darker and darker, to the color of 
actual evil. Then follows the blight of every habit. In- 
dolence promises without redeeming the pledge ; a m\>\ 
of forgetfulness rises up and obscures the memory of 
vows and oaths. The negligence of laziness breeds more 
falsehoods than the cunning of the sharper. As poverty 
waits upon the steps of Indolence, so, upon such poverty, 
broad equivocations, subterfuges, lying denials. False- 
hood becomes the instrument of every plan. Negligence 
of truth, next occasional falsehood, then wanton men- 
dacity, — these three strides traverse the whole road of 
lies. 

Indolence as surely runs to dishonesty, as to lying. 
Indeed, they are but different parts of the same road, and 
not far apart. In directing the conduct of the Ephesian 
converts, Paul says, Let him that stole, steal no more, but 
rather let him labor, ivorking with his hands the tiling 
which is good. The men who were thieves, were those 
who had ceased to work. Industry was the road back to 
honesty. When stores are broken open, the idle are first 
suspected. The desperate forgeries and swindlings of 
past years have taught men, upon their occurrence, to 
ferret their authors among the unemployed, or among 
those vainly occupied in vicious pleasures. 

The terrible passion for stealing rarely grows upon the 
young, except through the necessities of their idle pleas- 
ures. Business is first neglected for amusement, and 
amusement soon becomes the only business. The appe- 
tite for vicious pleasure out-runs the means of procuring 
it. The theatre, the circus, the card-table, the midnight 
carouse, demand money. When scanty earnings are 
gone, the young man pilfers from the till. First, because 
he hopes to repay, and next, because he despairs of pay- 
ing — for the disgrace of stealing ten dollars or a thousand 
will be the same, but not their respective pleasures. 
Next, he will gamble, since it is only another form of 
stealing. Gradually excluded from reputable society, the 
vagrant takes all the badges of vice, and is familiar with 
her paths ; and, through them, enters the broad road of 
crime. Society precipitates its lazy members, as water 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS. 21 

does its iilili ; and they form at the bottom, a pestilent 
sediment, stirred up by every breeze of evil, into riots, 
robberies and murders. Into it drains all the filth, and 
oat of it, as from a morass, flow all the streams of pollu- 
tion. Brutal wretches, desperately haunted by the law, 
crawling in human filth, brood here their villain schemes, 
and plot mischief to man. Hither resorts the truculent 
demagogue, to stir up the foetid filth against his adversa- 
ries, or to bring up mobs out of this sea, which cannot 
rest, but casts up mire and dirt. 

The results of Indolence upon communities, are as 
marked as upon individuals. In a town of industrious 
people, the streets would be clean ; houses neat and com- 
fortable ; fences in repair ; school- houses swarming with 
rosy-faced children, decently clad, and well-behaved. 
The laws would be respected, because justly administered. 
The church would be thronged with devout worshippers. 
The tavern would be silent, and for the most part empty, 
or a welcome retreat for weary travellers. Grog-sellers 
would fail, and mechanics grow rich ; labor would be 
honorable, and loafing a disgrace. For music, the people 
would have the blacksmith's anvil, and the carpenter's 
hammer ; and at home, the spinning-wheel, and girls 
cheerfully singing at their work. Debts would be seldom 
paid, because seldom made ; but if contracted, no grim 
officer would be invited to the settlement. Town-officers 
would be respectable men, taking office reluctantly, and 
only for the public good. Public days would be full of 
sports, without fighting ; and elections would be as 
orderly as weddings or funerals. 

In a town of lazy men, I should expect to find crazy 
houses, shingles and weather-boards knocked off; doors 
hingeless, and all a-creak : windows stuffed with rags, 
hats, or pillows. Instead of flowers in summer, and 
warmth in winter, every side of the house would swarm 
with vermin in hot weather — and with starveling pigs in 
cold ; fences would be curiosities of lazy contrivance, and 
gates hung with ropes, or lying flat in the mud. Lank 
cattle would follow every loaded wagon, supplicating a 
morsel, with famine in their looks. Children would be 
ragged, dirty, saucy ; the school-house empty ; the jail 
full ; the church silent; the grog-shops noisy; and the 



22 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

carpenter, tlie saddler, and the blacksmith, would do 
their principal work at taverns. Lawyers would reign ; 
constables flourish, and hunt sneaking criminals ; burly 
justices, (as their interests might dictate,) would connive 
a compromise, or make a commitment. The peace-offi- 
cers would wink at tumults, arrest rioters in fun, and 
drink with them in good earnest. Good men would be 
obliged to keep dark, and bad men would swear, fight, 
and rule the town. Public days would be scenes of con- 
fusion, and end in rows; elections would be drunken, 
illegal, boisterous and brutal. 

The young abhor the last results of Idleness ; but they 
do not perceive that the first steps lead to the last. They 
are in the opening of this career; but with them it is 
genteel leisure, not laziness ; it is relaxation, not sloth ; 
amusement, not indolence. But leisure, relaxation, and 
amusement, when men ought to be usefully engaged, are 
Indolence. A specious Industry is the worst Idleness. A 
young man perceives that the first steps lead to the last, 
with everybody but himself. He sees others become 
drunkards by social tippling, — he sips socially, as if he 
could not be a drunkard. He sees others become dis- 
honest, by petty habits of fraud ; but will indulge slight 
aberrations, as vf he could not become knavish. Though 
others, by lying, lose all character, he does not imagine 
that his little dalliances with falsehood will make him a 
liar. He knows that salacious imaginations, villainous 
pictures, harlot snuff-boxes, and illicit familiarities, have 
led thousands to her door, whose house is the way to hell ; 
yet he never sighs or trembles lest these things should 
take him to this inevitable way of damnation ! 

In reading these strictures upon Indolence, you will 
abhor it in others, without suspecting it in yourself. 
While you read, I fear you are excusing yourself ; you 
are supposing that your leisure has not been laziness ; or 
that, with your disposition, and in your circumstances, 
Indolence is harmless. Be not deceived : if you are 
idle, you are on the road to ruin : and there are few 
stopping places upon it. It is rather a precipice, than a 
road. AVhile I point out the temptation to Indolence, 
scrutinize your course, and pronounce honestly upon your 
risk. 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS. 23 

1. Some are tempted to Indolence by their wretched 
training, or rather, wretched want of it. How many 
families are the most remiss, whose low condition and 
sufferings are the strongest inducement to Industry. The 
children have no inheritance, yet never work ; no educa- 
tion, yet are never sent to school. It is hard to keep 
their rags around them, yet none of them will earn better 
raiment. If ever there was a case when a Government 
should interfere between parent and child, that seems to 
be the one, where children are started in life with an 
education of vice. If, in every community, three things 
should be put together, which always work together, the 
front would be a grogshop, — tiie middle a jail, — the rear 
a gallows; — an infernal trinity; and the recruits for this 
three-headed monster, are largely drafted from the lazy 
children of worthless parents. 

2. The children of rich parents are apt to be reared 
in Indolence. The ordinary motives to industry are 
wanting, and the temptations to sloth are multiplied. 
Other men labor to provide a support; to amass wealth ; 
to secure homage ; to obtain power ; to multiply the 
elegant products of art. The child of affluence inherits 
these things. Why should he labor who may command 
universal service, whose money subsidizes the inventions 
of art, exhausts the luxuries of society, and makes rarities 
common by their abundance ? Only the blind would not 
see that riches and ruin run in one channel to prodigal 
children. The most rigorous regimen, the most con- 
firmed industry, and steadfast morality can alone disarm 
inherited wealth, and reduce it to a blessing. The profli- 
gate wretch, who fondly watches his father's advancing 
decrepitude, and secretly curses the lingering steps of 
death, (seldom too slow except to hungry heirs,) at last 
is overblessed in the tidings that the loitering work is 
done — and the estate his. When the golden shower has 
fallen, he rules as a prince in a court of expectant para- 
sites. All the sluices by which pleasurable vice drains 
an estate are opened wide. A few years complete the 
ruin. The hopeful heir, avoided by all whom he has 
helped, -ignorant of useful labor, and scorning a knowl- 
edge of it, fired with an incurable appetite for vicious 
excitement, sinks steadily down, — a profligate, a wretch, 



2 1- LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

a villain-scoundrel, a convicted felon. Let parents who 
hate their offspring rear them to hate labor, and to in- 
herit riches, and before long the) r will be stung by every 
vice, racked by its poison, and damned by its penalty. 

3. Another cause of Idleness is found in the secret ef- 
fects of youthful indulgence. The purest pleasures lie 
within the circle of useful occupation. Mere pleasure, — 
sought outside of usefulness, — existing by itself, — is 
fraught with poison. When its exhilaration has thor- 
oughly kindled the mind, the passions thenceforth refuse 
a simple food ; they crave and require an excitement, 
higher than any ordinary occupation can give. After revel- 
ling all night in wine-dreams, or amid the fascinations 
of the dance, or the deceptions of the drama, 
what has the dull store, or the dirty shop, which 
can continue the pulse at this fever-heat of delight ? 
The face of Pleasure to the youthful imagination, is the 
face of an angel, a paradise of smiles, a home of love ; 
while the rugged face of Industry, embrowned by toil, is 
dull and repulsive : but at the end it is not so. These are 
harlot charms which Pleasure wears. At last, when In- 
dustry shall put on her beautiful garments, and rest in 
the palace which her own hands have built, — Pleasure, 
blotched and diseased with indulgence, shall lie down and 
die upon the dung-hill. 

4. Example leads to Idleness. The children of indus- 
trious parents at the sight of vagrant rovers seeking their 
sports wherever they will, disrelish labor, and envy this 
unrestrained leisure. At the first relaxation of parental 
vigilance, they shrink from their odious tasks. Idleness 
is begun when labor is a burden, and industry a bondage, 
and only idle relaxation a pleasure. 

The example of political men, office-seekers, and pub- 
lic officers, is not usually conducive to Industry. The 
idea insensibly fastens upon the mind, that greatness and 
hard labor are not companions. The inexperience of 
youth imagines that great men are men of great leisure. 
They see them much in public, often applauded, and 
greatly followed. How disgusting in contrast is the 
mechanic's life ; a tinkering shop, — dark and smutty, is 
th ■ only theatre of his exploits ; and labor, which covers 
him with sweat ami Hi's him with weariness, brings 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS. 25 

neither notice nor praise. The ambitions apprentice, sigh- 
ing over his soiled hands, hates his ignoble work ; — 
neglecting it, lie aspires to better things, — plots in a caucus ; 
declaims in a bar-room ; fights in a grog-shop ; and dies 
in a ditch. 

5. But the Indolence begotten by venal ambition must 
not be so easily dropped. At those periods of occasional 
disaster when embarrassments cloud the face of commerce, 
and trade drags heavily, sturdy laborers forsake indus- 
trial occupations, and petition for office. Had I a son 
able to gain a livelihood by toil, I had rather bury him, 
than witness his beggarly supplications for office ; — 
sneaking along the path of men's passions to gain his ad- 
vantage ; holding in the breath of his honest opinions ; 
and breathing feigned words of flattery to hungry ears, 
popular or official ; and crawling, viler than a snake, 
through all the unmanly courses by which ignoble 
wretches purloin the votes of the dishonest, the drunken, 
and the vile. 

The late reverses of commerce have unsettled the hab- 
its of thousands. Manhood seems debilitated, and many 
sturdy yeomen are ashamed of nothing but labor. For a 
farthing-pittance of official salary, — for the miserable fees 
of a constable's olfice, — for the parin'gsand perquisites of 
any deputyship, — a hundred men in every village, rush 
forward, — scrambling, jostling, crowding, — each more ob- 
sequious than the other to lick the hand that holds the 
omnipotent vote, or the starveling office. The most 
supple gains a prize. Of the disappointed crowd, a few, 
rebuked by their sober reflections, go back to their 
honest trade, — ashamed and cured of office-seeking. 
But the majority grumble for a day, then prick forth 
their ears, arrange their feline arts, and mouse again for 
another office. The general appetite for office and dis- 
relish for industrial callings, is a prolific source of 
Idleness ; and it would be well for the honor of young 
men if they were bred to regard office as fit only for those 
who have clearly shown themselves able and willing to 
support their families without "it. No office can make a 
worthless man respectable ; and a man of integrity, thrift, 
and religion, has name enough without badge or office. 

6. Men become Indolent through the reverses of fortune. 



26 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

Surely, despondency is a grievous thing, and a heavy load 
[o bear. To see disaster and wreck in the present, and 
no light in the future ; but only storms, lurid by the con- 
trast of past prosperity, and growing darker as they ad- 
vance ; — to wear a constant expectation of woe like a 
girdle ; to see want at the door, imperiously knocking, 
whiie there is no strength to repel, or courage to bear its 
tyranny ; — indeed, this is dreadful enough. But there is 
a thing more dreadful. It is more dreadful if the manh 
wrecked with his fortune. Can anything be more poig- 
nant in anticipation, than one's ownself, unnerved, cowed 
down and slackened to utter pliancy, and helplessly drift- 
ing and driven down the troubled sea of life ? Of all 
things on earth, next to his God, a broken man should 
cling to a courageous Industry. If it brings nothing back, 
and saves nothing, it will save him. To be pressed down 
by adversity has nothing in it of disgrace ; but it is dis- 
graceful to lie down under it like a supple dog. Indeed, 
to stand composedly in the storm, amidst its rage and 
wildest devastations ; to let it beat over you, and roar 
around you, and pass by you, and leave you undismayed, 
— this is to be a man. Adversity is the mint in which 
God stamps upon us his image and superscription. In 
this matter men may learn of insects. The ant will re- 
pair his dwelling as often as the mischievous foot crushes 
it ; the spider will exhaust life itself, before he will live 
without a web ; — the bee can be decoyed from his labor 
neither by plenty nor scarcity. If summer be abundant 
it toils none the less ; if it be parsimonious of flowers, the 
tiny laborer sweeps a wider circle, and by Industry, re- 
pairs the frugality of the season. Man should be 
ashamed to be rebuked in vain by the spider, the ant, 
and the bee. 

Seest thou a man diligent in his business, he shall stand 
before kings, he shall not stand before mean men. 



LECTURE II. 



Providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also 
in the sight of men. 2 Cor. viii. 21. 

Only extraordinary circumstances can give the ap- 
pearance of dishonesty to an honest man. Usually, not 
to seem honest, is not to be so. The quality must not be 
doubtful like twilight, lingering between night and day 
and taking hues from both ; it must be day-light, clear, 
and effulgent. This is the doctrine of the Bible: Pro- 
viding for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, 
but also in the sight of men. In general it may be 
said that no one has honesty without dross, until he lias 
honesty without suspicion. 

We are passing through times upon which the seeds of 
dishonesty have heen sown broadcast, and they have 
brought forth a hundred fold. These times will pass 
away; but like ones will come again. As physicians 
study the causes and record the phenomena of plagues 
and pestilences, to draw from them an antidote against 
their recurrence, so should we leave to another genera- 
tion a history of moral plagues, as the best antidote to 
their recurring malignity. 

Upon a land, — capacious beyond measure, whose 
prodigal soil rewards labor with an unharvestable abun- 
dance of exuberant fruits, occupied by a people signal- 
ized by enterprise and industry, — there came a summer 
of prosperity which lingered so long and shone so 
brightly, that men forgot that, winter could ever come. 
Each day grew brighter. No reins were put upon the 
imagination. Its dreams passed forrealities. Even sober 
men, touched with wildness, seemed to expect a realiza- 
tion of oriental tales. Upon this bright day came sudden 
frosts, storms, and blight. Men awoke from gorgeous 
dreams in the midst of desolation. The harvests of years 
were swept away in a day. The strongest firms were 

27 



2$ LECTURES TO YOUNG MI-X. 

rent as easily as the oak by lightning. Speculating 

companies were dispersed as seared leaves from a tree in 
autumn. Merchants were ruined by thousands ; clerks 
turned adrift by ten thousands. Mechanics were left in 
idleness. Farmers sighed over flocks and wheat as use- 
less as the stones and dirt. The wide sea of commerce 
was stagnant ; upon the realm of Industry settled down 
a sullen lethargy. 

Out of this reverse swarmed an unnumbered host of 
dishonest men, like vermin from a carcass. Banks were 
exploded, — or robbed, — or fleeced by astounding forgeries. 
Mighty companies, without cohesion, went to pieces, and 
hordes of wretches snatched up every bale that came 
ashore. Cities were ransacked by troops of villains. 
The unparalled frauds, which sprung like mines on every 
hand, set every man to trembling lest the next explosion 
should be under his own feet. Fidelity seemed to have 
forsaken men. Many that had earned a reputation for 
sterling honesty were cast so suddenly headlong into wick- 
edness, that man shrank from man. Suspicion overgrew 
confidence, and the heart bristled with the nettles and 
thorns of fear and jealousy. Then had almost come to 
pass the divine delineation of ancient wickedness : The 
good man is perished out of the earth : and there is none 
upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood ; they 
hunt every man his broiher with a net. That they may do 
evil with both hands earnestly, the prince and the judge 
ashed for a reward: and the great man uttereth his mis- 
chievous desire ; so they wrap it up. Hie best of them is a 
brier ; the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge. 
The world looked upon a continent of in exhaustible fer- 
tility, (whose harvest had glutted the markets, and rotted 
in disuse,) filled with lamentation, and its inhabitants 
wandering like bereaved citizens among the ruins of an 
earthquake, mourning for children, for houses crushed, 
and property buried forever. 

That no measure might be put to the calamity, the 
Church of God, which rises a stately tower of refuge to 
desponding men, seemed now to have lost its power of pro- 
tection. When the solemn voice of Religion should have 
gone over the land, as the call of God to guilty man to seek 
in him their guilty strength ; in this time when Religion 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY. 29 

should have restored sight to the blind, made the lame to 
walk, and bound up the broken-hearted, she was herself 
mourning in sackcloth. Out of her courts came the noise 
of warring sects ; some contending against others with 
bitter warfare ; and some, possessed of a demon, wallowed 
upon the ground foaming and rending themselves. In a 
time of panic, and disaster, and distress, and crime, the 
fountain which should have been for the healing of men, 
cast up its sediments, and gave out a bitter stream of pollu- 
tion. 

In every age, an universal pestilence has hushed the 
clamor of contention, and cooled the heats of parties; 
but the greatness of our national calamity seemed only 
to enkindle the fury of political parties. Contentions 
never ran with such deep streams and impetuous currents, 
as amidst the ruin of our industry and prosperity. 
States were greater debtors to foreign nations, than their 
citizens were to each other. Both states and citizens 
shrunk back from their debts, and yet more dishonestly 
from the taxes necessary to discharge them. The Gen- 
eral .Government did not escape, but lay becalmed, or 
pursued its course, like a ship, at every furlong 
touching in rocks, or beating against the sands. The 
Capitol trembled with the first waves of a question 
which is yet to shake the whole land. Now the questions 
of exciting qualities perplexed the realm of legislation, 
and of morals. To all this must be added a manifest 
decline of family government ; an increase of the ratio 
of popular ignorance ; a decrease of reverence for law, 
and an effeminate administration of it. Popular tumults 
have been as frequent as freshets in our rivers ; and like 
them, have swept over the land with desolation, and left 
their filthy slime in the highest places : — upon the press ; 
upon the legislature ; — in the halls of our courts ; — and 
even upon the sacred bench of Justice. If unsettled 
times foster dishonesty, it should have flourished among 
us. And it has. 

Our nation must expect a periodical return of such 
convulsions ; but experience should steadily curtail their 
ravages, and remedy their immoral tendencies. Young 
men have before them lessons of manifold wisdom taught 
by the severest of masters — experience. They should 



30 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

be studied ; and that they may be, I shall, from this gen- 
eral survey, turn to a specific enumeration of the causes 
of dishonesty. 

1. Some men find in their bosom from the first, a vehe- 
ment inclination to dishonest ways. Knavish propensities 
are inherent : born with the child and transmissible from 
parent to son. The children of a sturdy thief, if taken 
from him at birth and reared by honest men, would, 
doubtless, have to contend against a strongly dishonest 
inclination. Foundlings and orphans under public char- 
itable charge, are more apt to become vicious than other 
children. They are usually born of low and vicious par- 
ents, and inherit their parent's propensities. Only the 
most thorough moral training can overrule this innate 
depravity. 

2. A child naturally fair-minded, may become dishon- 
est by parental example. He is early taught to be sharp 
in bargains, and vigilant for every advantage. Little is 
said about honesty, and much upon shrewd traffic. A 
dexterous trick, becomes a family anecdote ; visitors are 
regaled with the boy's precarious keenness. Hearing the 
praise of his exploits, he studies craft, and seeks parental 
admiration by adroit knaveries. He is taught, for his 
safety, that he must not range beyond the law : that 
would be unprofitable. He calculates his morality thus : 
Legal honesty is the best policy, — dishonesty, then, is a bad 
bargain — and therefore wrong — everything is wrong 
which is unthrifty. Whatever profits breaks no legal 
statute — though it is gained by falsehood, by unfairness; 
by gloss ; through dishonor, unkindness, and an unscrup- 
ulous conscience — he considers fair, and says ; The law 
allows it. Men may spend a long life without an indic- 
table action, and without an honest one. No law can 
reach the insidious ways of subtle craft. The law allows, 
and religion forbids men, to profit by others' misfortunes, 
to prowl for prey among the ignorant, to overreach the 
simple, to suck the last life-drops from the bleeding ; to 
hover over men as a vulture over herds, swooping down 
upon the weak, the straggling, and the weary. The in- 
fernal craft of cunning men, turns the law itself to piracy, 
and works outrageous fraud in the hall of Courts, by the 
decision of judges, and under the seal of Justice. 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY. 31 

3. Dishonesty is learned from one's employers. The 
boy of honest parents and honestly bred, goes to a trade, 
or a store, where the employer practises legal frauds. 
The plain honesty of the boy excites roars of laughter 
among the better taught clerks. The master tells them 
that such blundering truthfulness must be pitied; the 
boy evidently lias been neglected, and is not to be ridi- 
culed for what he could not help. At first, it verily pains 
the youth's scruples, and tinges his face to frame a delib- 
erate dishonesty, to finish, and to polish it; His tongue 
stammers at a lie ; but the example of a rich master, the 
jeers and gibes of shopmates, with gradual practice, cure 
all this. He becomes adroit in fleecing customers for his 
master's sake, and equally dexterous in fleecing his mas- 
ter for his own sake. 

4. Extravagance is a prolific source of dishonesty. 
Extravagance, — which is foolish expense, or expense dis- 
proportionate to one's means, — may be found in all grades 
of society ; but it is chiefly apparent among the rich, those 
aspiring to wealth, and those wishing to be thought afflu- 
ent. Many a young man cheats his business, by trans- 
ferring his means to theatres, race-courses, expensive par- 
ties, and to the nameless and numberless projects of 
pleasure. The enterprise of others is baffled by the ex- 
travagance of their family ; for few men can make as 
much in a year as an extravagant woman can carry on 
her back in one winter. Some are ambitious of fashion- 
able society, and will gratify their vanity at any expense. 
This disproportion between means and expense so^n 
brings on a crisis. The victim is straitened for money ; 
without it he must abandon his rank ; for fashionable so- 
ciety remorselessly rejects all butterflies which have lost 
their brilliant colors. Which shall he choose, honesty 
and mortifying exclusion, or gaiety purchased by dishon- 
esty ? The severity of this choice sometimes sobers the 
intoxicated brain; and a young man shrinks from the 
gulf, appalled at the darkness of dishonesty. But to ex- 
cessive vanity, high-life with or without fraud, is Para- 
dise; and any other life Purgatory. Here many resort 
to dishonesty without a scruple. It is at this point that 
public sentiment half sustains dishonesty. It scourges 
the thief of Necessity, and pities the thief of Fashion. 



32 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

The struggle with others is on the very ground of 
honor. A wife led from affluence to frigid penury and 
neglect ; from leisure and luxury to toil and want ; 
daughters, once courted as rich, to be disesteemed when 
poor, — this is the gloomy prospect, seen through a magic 
haze of despondency. Honor, love and generosity, 
strangely bewitched, plead for dishonesty as the only al- 
ternative to such suffering. But go, young man, to your 
wife ; tell her the alternative ; if she is worthy of you, 
she will face your poverty with a courage which shall 
shame your fears, and lead you into its wilderness and 
through it, all unshrinking. Many there be who went 
weeping into this desert, and ere long, having found in it 
the fountains of the puret»t peace, have thanked God for 
the pleasures of poverty. But if your wife unmans your 
resolution, imploring dishonor rather than penury, may 
God pity and help you ! You dwell with a sorceress, and 
lev,- can resist her wiles. 

5. Debt is an inexhaustible fountain of Dishonesty. 
The Royal Preacher tells us : The borrower is servant to the 
lender. Debt is a rigorous servitude. The debtor learns 
the cunning tricks, delays, concealments, and frauds, by 
which slaves evade or cheat their master. He is tempted 
to make ambiguous statements ; pledges, with secret pass- 
ages of escape ; contracts, with fraudulent constructions ; 
lying excuses, and more mendacious promises. He is 
tempted to elude responsibility ; to delay settlements ; to 
prevaricate upon the terms ; to resist equity, and devise 
specious fraud. When the eager creditor would restrain 
sucli vagrancy by law, the debtor then thinks himself re- 
leased from moral obligation, and brought to a legal 
game, in which it is lawful for the best player to win. 
He disputes true accounts ; he studies subterfuges ; ex- 
torts provocations delays ; and harbors in every nook 
and corner, and passage, of the law's labyrinth. At 
length the measure is filled up, and the malignant power 
of debt is known. It has opened in the "heart every 
fountain of iniquity; it has besoiled the conscience ; it 
has tarnished the honor ; it has made the man a deliber- 
ate student of knavery : a systematic practitioner of 
fraud : it has dragged him through all the sewers of petty 
passions, — anger, hate, revenge, malicious folly, or malig- 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY. 33 

"riant shame. When a debtor is beaten at every point, 
and the law will put her screws upon him, there is no 
depth in the gulf of dishonesty into which he will not 
boldly plunge. Some men put ^heir property to the 
flames, assassinate the detested creditor, and end the 
frantic tragedy by suicide, or the gallows. Others, in 
view of the catastrophe, have converted all property to 
cash, and concealed it. The law's utmost skill, and the 
creditor's fury, are alike powerless now, — the tree is 
green and thrifty ; its roots drawing a copious supply 
from some hidden fountain. 

Craft has another harbor of resort for the piratical 
crew of dishonesty, viz. : putting the property out of the 
law's reach by a fraudulent conveyance. Whoever runs in 
debt, and consumes the equivalent of his indebtedness ; 
whoever is fairly liable to damage for broken contracts ; 
whoever by folly, has incurred debts and lost the benefit 
of his outlay ; whoever is legally obliged to pay for his 
malice or carelessness ; whoever by infidelity to public 
trusts has made his property a just remuneration for his 
defaults ; — whoever of all these, or whoever, under any 
circumstances, puts out of his hands property, morally or 
legally due to creditors,, is a dishonest man. The crazy 
excuses which men render to their .consciences, are only 
such as every villain makes, who is unwilling to look 
upon the black face of his crimes. 

He who will receive a conveyance of property, know- 
ing it to be illusive and fraudulent, is as wicked as the 
principal ; and as much meaner, as the tool and subordi- 
nate of villany is meaner than the master who uses him. 

If a church, knowing all these facts, or wilfully ignor- 
ant of them, allows a member to nestle in the security 
of the sanctuary ; then the act of this robber, and the con- 
nivance of the church, are but the two parts of one crime. 

6. Bankruptcy, although a branch of debt, deserves 
a separate mention. It sometimes crushes a man's spirit, 
and sometimes exasperates it. The poignancy of the evil 
depends much upon the disposition of the creditors ; and 
as much upon the disposition of the victim. Should they 
act with the lenity of Christian men, and he with manly 
honesty, promptly rendering up whatever satisfaction of 
debt he has, — he may visit the lowest places of human 
3 



34 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

adversity, and find there the light of good men's esteem, 
the support of conscience, and the sustenance of religion. 

A bankrupt may fall into the hands of men whose ten- 
der-mercies are cruel ; or his dishonest equivocations may 
exasperate their temper and provoke every thorn and 
brier of the law. When men's passions are let loose, 
especially their avarice whetted by real or imaginary 
wrong ; when there is a rivalry among creditors, lest any 
one should feast upon the victim more than his share ; 
and they all rush upon him like wolves upon a wounded 
deer, dragging him down, ripping him open, breast and 
flank, plunging deep their bloody muzzles to reach the 
heart and taste blood at the very fountain ; — is it strange 
that resistance is desperate and unscrupulous? At length 
the sufferer drags his mutilated carcass aside, every nerve 
and muscle wrung with pain, and his whole body an in- 
strument of agony. He curses the whole inhuman crew 
with envenomed imprecations ; and thenceforth, a brood- 
ing misanthrope, he pays back to society, by studied vil- 
lanies, the legal wrongs which the relentless justice of a 
few, or his own knavery, have brought upon him. 

7. There is a circle of moral dishonesties practised be- 
cause the law allows them. The very anxiety of law to 
reach the devices of cunning, so perplexes its statues 
with exceptions, limitations, and supplements, that like a 
castle gradually enlarged for centuries, it has its crevices, 
dark corners, secret holes and winding passages — an end- 
less harbor for rats and vermin, where no trap can catch 
them. We are viUanously infested with legal rats and 
rascals, who are able to commit the most flagrant dishon- 
esties with impunity. They can do all of wrong which 
is profitable, without that part which is actionable. The 
very ingenuity of these miscreants excites such admira- 
tion of their skill, that their life is gilded with a specious 
respectability. Men profess little esteem for blunt, ne- 
cessitous thieves, who rob and run away ; but for a gen- 
tleman who can break the whole of God's law so adroitly, 
as to leave man's law unbroken ; who can indulge in such 
conservative, stealing that his fellow-men award him a 
rank among honest men for the excessive skill of his dis- 
honesty — for such an one, I fear, there is almost univer- 
sal sympathy. 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY. 35 

8. Political Dishonesty, breeds dishonesty of every 
kind. It is possible for good men to permit single sins 
to coexist with general integrity, where the evil is in- 
dulged through ignorance. Once, undoubted Christ- 
ians were slave-traders. They might be, while unen- 
lightened ; but not in our times. A state of mind which 
will intend one fraud, will, upon occasions, intend a thous- 
and. He that upon one emergency will lie, will be sup- 
plied with emergencies. He that will perjure himself to 
save a friend, will do it, in a desperate juncture, to save 
himself. The highest Wisdom has informed us that He 
that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. Circum- 
stances may withdraw a politician from temptation to any 
but political dishonesty ; but under temptation, a dishon- 
est politician would be a dishonest cashier, — w r ould be 
dishonest anywhere, — in anything. The fury which de- 
stroys an opponent's character, would stop at nothing, if 
barriers were thrown down. That which is true of the 
leaders in politics, is true of subordinates. Political dis- 
honesty in voters runs into general dishonesty, as the 
rotten speck taints the whole apple. A community 
whose politics are conducted by a perpetual breach of 
honesty on both sides, will be .tainted by immorality 
throughout. Men will play the same game in their pri- 
vate affairs, which they have learned to play in public 
matters. The guile, the crafty vigilance, the dishonest 
advantage, the cunning sharpness ; — the tricks and traps 
and sly evasions ; the equivocal promises, and unequivo- 
cal neglect of them, which characterize political action, 
will equally characterize private action. The mind has 
no kitchen to do its dirty work in, while the parlor re- 
mains clean. Dishonesty is an atmosphere ; if it comes 
into one apartment, it penetrates into every one. Who- 
ever will lie in politics, will lie in traffic. Whoever will 
slander in politics, will slander in personal squabbles. A 
professor of religion who is a dishonest politician, is a 
dishonest Christian. His creed is a perpetual index of 
his hypocrisy. 

The genius of our goverment directs the attention of 
every citizen to politics. Its spirit reaches the uttermost 
bound of society, and pervades the whole mass. If its 
channels are slimy witli corruption, what limit can be 



36 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

set to its malign influence? The turbulence of (lections, 
the virulence of the press, the desperation of bad men, 
the hoplessness of efforts which are not cunning, but only 
honest, have driven many conscientious men from any 
concern with politics. This is suicidal. Thus the temp- 
est will grow blacker and fiercer. Our youth will be 
caught up in its whirling bosom and dashed to pieces, 
and its hail will break down every green thing. At 
God's house the cure should begin. Let the hand of 
discipline smite the leprous lips which shall utter the pro- 
fane heresy : All is fair in politics. If any hoary pro- 
fessor, drunk with the mingled wine of excitement, shall 
tell our youth, that a Christian man may act in politics 
by any other rule of morality than that of the Bible ; 
and that wickedness performed for a party, is not as 
abominable, as if done for a man ; or that any necessity 
justifies or palliates dishonesty in word or deed, — let 
such an one go out of the camp, and his pestilent breath 
no longer spread contagion among our youth. No man 
who loves liis country, should shrink from her side when 
she groans with raging distempers. Let every Christian 
man stand in his place ; rebuke every dishonest practice ; 
scorn a political as well as a personal lie ; and refuse with 
indignation to be insulted by the solicitation of an im- 
moral man. Let good men of all parties require honesty, 
integrity, veracity, and morality in politics, and there, as 
powerfully as anywhere else, the requisitions of public 
sentiment will ultimately be felt. 

9. A corrupt public sentiment produces dishonesty. 
A public sentiment, in which dishonesty is not disgrace- 
ful; in wdiick bad men are respectable, are trusted, are 
honored, are exalted — is a curse to the young. The 
fever of speculation, the universal derangement of busi- 
ness, the growing laxness of morals, is, to an alarming 
extent, introducing such a state of things. Men of no- 
torious immorality, whose dishonesty is flagrant, whose 
private habits would disgrace the ditch, are powerful and 
popular. I have seen a man stained with every sin. ex- 
cept those which required courage; into whose head I do 
not think a pure thought has entered for forty years; in 
whose heart an honorable feeling would droop for very 
loneliness ; — in evil he was ripe and rotten ; hoary and 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY. 37 

depraved in deed, in word, in Ills present life and in all 
his past; evil when by himself, and viler among men; 
corrupting to the young ; — to domestic fidelity, a recre- 
ant ; to common honor, a traitor ; to honesty, an out- 
law ; to religion, a hypocrite ; — base in all that is worthy 
of man, and accomplished in whatever is disgraceful ; and 
yet this wretch could go where he would ; enter good 
men's dwellings, and purloin their votes. Men would 
curse him, yet obey him ; hate him and assist him ; warn 
their sons against him, and lead them to the polls for 
him. A public sentiment which produces ignominious 
knaves, cannot breed honest men. 

Any calamity, civil or commercial, which checks the 
administration of justice between man and man, is ruin- 
ous to honesty. The violent fluctuations of business 
cover the ground with rubbish over which men stumble ; 
and fill the air with dust, in which all the shapes of 
honesty appear distorted. Men are thrown upon unusual 
expedients ; dishonesties are unobserved ; those who have 
been reckless and profuse, stave off the legitimate fruits 
of their folly by desperate shifts. We have not yet 
emerged from a period, in which debts were insecure ; 
the debtor legally protected against the rights of the 
creditor ; taxes laid, not by the requirements of justice, 
but for political effect ; and lowered to a dishonest insuffi- 
ciency ; and when thus diminished, not collected; the 
citizens resisting their own officers ; officers resigning at 
the bidding of the electors ; the laws of property par- 
alyzed ; bankrupt laws built up ; and stay-laws unconsti- 
tutionally enacted, upon which the courts look with aver- 
sion, jet fear to deny them, lest the wildness of popular 
opinion should roll back disdainfully upon the bench, to 
despoil its dignity, and prostrate its power. General 
suffering has made us tolerant of general dishonesty ; and 
the gloom of our commercial disaster threatens to become 
the pall of our morals. 

If the shocking stupidity of the public mind to atro- 
cious dishonesties is not aroused ; if good men do not 
bestir themselves to drag the young from this foul sor- 
cery ; if the relaxed bands of honesty are not tightened, 
and conscience intoned to a severer morality, our night is 
at hand, — our midnight not far off. Woe to that guilty 



38 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

people who sit down upon broken laws, and wealth saved 
by injustice ! Woe to a generation fed upon the bread 
of fraud, whose children's inheritance shall be a per- 
petual memento to their father's unrighteousness; to 
whom dishonesty shall be made pleasant by association 
with the revered memories of father, brother, and 
friend ! 

But when a whole people, united by a common disre- 
gard of justice, conspire to defraud public creditors ; and 
States vie with States in an infamous repudiation of just 
debts, by open or sinister methods ; and nations exert 
their sovereignty to protect and dignify the knavery of a 
Commonwealth; then the confusion of domestic affairs 
lias bred a fiend, before whose flight, honor fades away, 
and under whose feet the sanctity of truth and the reli- 
gion of solemn compacts are stamped down and ground 
into the dirt. Need we ask the causes of growing dis- 
honesty among the young, and the increasing untrust- 
worthiness of all agents, when States are seen clothed 
with the panoply of dishonesty, and nations put on fraud 
for their garments ? 

Absconding agents, swindling schemes, and defalca- 
tions, occuring in such melancholy abundance, have at 
length ceased to be wonders, and-rank with the common 
accidents of fire and flood. The budget of each week is 
incomplete without its mob and runaway cashier — its 
duel and defaulter; and as waves which roll to the shore 
are lost in those which follow on, so the villanies of each 
week obliterate the record of the last. 

The mania of dishonesty cannot arise from local 
causes ; it is the result of disease in the whole commu- 
nity; an eruption betokening foulness of blood; blotches 
symptomatic of a disordered system. 

10. Financial agents are especially liable to the 
temptations of Dishonesty. Safe merchants, and vision- 
ary schemers ; sagacious adventurers, and rash specula- 
tors ; frugal beginners, and retired millionaires, are con- 
stantly around them. Every word, every act, every 
en try. every letter, suggests only wealth — its germ, its 
bud, its blossom, its golden harvest. Its brilliance daz- 
zles the sight; its seductions stir the appetites; its power 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY. 39 

fires the ambition, and the soul concentrates its energies 
to obtain wealth, as life's highest and only joy. 

Besides the influence of such associations, direct deal- 
ing in money as a commodity, has a peculiar effect upon 
the heart. There is no property between it and the 
mind ; — no medium to mellow its light. The mind is 
diverted and refreshed by no thoughts upon the quality 
of soils ; the durability of structures ; the advantages of 
sites ; the beauty of fabrics ; it is not invigorated by the 
necessity of labor and ingenuity which the mechanic 
feels ; by the invention of the artisan, or the taste of the 
artist. The whole attention falls directly upon naked 
Money. The hourly sight of it whets the appetite, and 
sharpens it to avarice. Thus, with an intense regard of 
riches, steals in also the miser's relish of coin — that in- 
satiate gazing and fondling, by which seductive metal 
wins to itself all the blandishments of love. 

Those who mean to be rich, often begin by imitating 
the expensive courses of those who are rich. They are 
also tempted to venture, before they have means of their 
own, in brilliant speculations. How can a young cashier 
pay the drafts of his illicit pleasures, or procure the seed, 
for the harvest of speculation, out of his narrow salary ? 
Here first begins to work the leaven of death. The 
mind wanders in dreams of gain ; it broods over projects 
of unlawful riches ; stealthily at first, and then with less 
reserve ; at last it boldly meditates the possibility of 
being dishonest and safe. When a man can seriously 
reflect upon dishonesty as a possible and profitable thing, 
he is already deeply dishonest. To a mind so tainted, 
will flock stories of consummate craft, of effective 
knavery, of fraud covered by its brilliant success. At 
times, the mind shrinks from its own thoughts, and trem- 
bles to look down the giddy cliff on whose edge they 
poise, or over which they fling themselves like sporting 
sea-birds. But these imagination will not be driven 
from the heart where they have once nested. They 
haunt a man's business, visit him in dreams, and vampire- 
like, fan the slumbers of the victim whom they will de- 
stroy. In some feverish hour, vibrating between con- 
science and avarice, the man staggers to a compromise. 
To satisfy his conscience he refuses to steal; and to 



40 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

gratify his avarice, he borrows the funds ; — not openly — 
not of ownenrs — not of me : but of the till — the safe — 
the vault ! 

He resolves to restore the money before discovery can 
ensue, and pocket the profits. Meanwhile, false entries 
are made, perjured oaths are sworn, forged papers are 
filed. His expenses grow profuse, and men wonder from 
what fountain so copious a stream can flow. 

Let us stop here to survey his condition. He flour- 
ishes, is called prosperous, thinks himself safe. Is he 
safe, or honest? He has stolen, and embarked the 
amount upon a sea over which wander perpetual storms ; 
where wreck is the common fate, and escape the acci- 
dent ; and now all his chance for the semblance of 
honesty, is staked upon the return of his embezzlements 
from among the sands, the rocks and currents, the winds 
and waves, and darkness, of tumultuous speculation. At 
length dawns the day of discovery. His guilty dreams 
have long foretokend it. As he confronts the disgrace 
almost face to face* how changed is the hideous aspect of 
his deed, from that fair face of promise with which it 
tempted him ! Conscience, and honor, and plain hon- 
esty, which left him when they could not restrain, now 
come back to sharpen his anguish. Overawed by the 
prospect of open shame, of his wife's disgrace, and his 
children's beggary, he cows down, and slinks out of life a 
frantic suicide. 

Some there be, however, less supple to shame. They 
meet their fate with cool impudence ; defy their em- 
ployers ; brave the court, and too often with success. 
The delusion of the public mind, or the confusion of 
affairs is such, that, while petty culprits are tumbled into 
prison, a cool, calculating and immense scoundrel is 
pitied, dandled and nursed by a sympathizing community. 
In the broad road slanting to the rogue's retreat, are seen 
the officer of the bank, the agent of the state, the officer 
of the church, in indiscriminate haste, outrunning a lazy 
justice, and bearing off the gains of astounding frauds. 
Avarice and pleasure seem to have dissolved the con- 
science, ft is a day of trouble and of perplexity from the 
Lord. We tremble to think that * our children must 
leave the covert of the family, and go out upon that dark 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY. 41 

and yesty sea, from whose wrath so many wrecks are cast 
up at our feet. Of one thing I am certain ; if the church 
of Christ is silent to such deeds, and makes her altar a 
refuge to such dishonesty, the day is coming when she 
shall have no altar, the light shall go out from her can- 
dlestick, her walls shall be desolate, and the fox look out 
at her windows. 

11. Executive clemency, by its frequency, has 
been a temptation to Dishonesty. Who will fear to be a 
culprit when a legal sentence is the argument of pity, 
and the prelude of pardon ? What can the community 
expect but growing dishonesty, when juries connive at 
acquittals, and judges condemn only to petition a pardon; 
when honest men and officers fly before a mob ; w r hen 
jails are besieged and threatened, if felons are not relin- 
quished; when the Executive, consulting the spirit of the 
community, receives the demands of the mob, and hum- 
bly complies, throwing down the fences of the law, that 
base rioters may walk unimpeded, to their work of ven- 
geance, or unjust mercy? A sickly .sentimentality too 
often enervates the administration of justice ; and the 
pardoning power becomes the master-key to let out un- 
washed, unrepentant criminals. * They have fleeced us, 
robbed us, and are ulcerous sores to the body politic ; 
yet our heart turns to water over their merited punish- 
ment. A fine young fellow, by accident, writes another's 
name for his own ; by a mistake equally unfortunate, he 
presents it at the bank ; innocently draw r s out the large 
amount; generously spends a part, and absent-mindedly 
hides the rest. Hard-hearted wretches there are, who 
would punish him for this ! Young men, admiring the 
neatness of the affair, pity his misfortune, and curse a 
stupid jury that knew no better than to send to a peni- 
tentiary, him, whose skill deserved a cashiership. He 
goes to his cell, the pity of a whole metropolis. Bulletins 
from Sing-Sing inform us daily what Edwards is doing, 
as if he were Napoleon at St. Helena. At length par- 
doned, he will go forth again to a renowned liberty ! 

If there be one way quicker than another, by which 
the Executive shall assist crime, and our laws foster it, it 
is that course which assures every dishonest man, that it 



42 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

is easy to defraud, easy to avoid arrest, easy to escape 
punishment, and easiest of all to obtain a pardon. 

12. Commercial speculations are prolific of Dis- 
honesty. Speculation is the risking of capital in enter- 
prises greater than we can control, or in enterprises 
whose elements are not at all calculable. All calcula- 
tions of the future are uncertain ; but those which are 
based upon long experience approximate certainty, while 
those which are drawn by sagacity from probable events, 
are notoriously unsafe. Unless, however, some venture, 
we shall forever tread an old and dull path ; therefore 
enterprise is allowed to pioneer new ways. The safe 
enterpriser explores cautiously, ventures at first a little, 
and increases the venture with the ratio of experience. 
A speculator looks out upon the new region, as upon a 
far-away landscape, whose features are softened to beauty 
by distance ; upon a hope, he stakes that, which, if it 
wins, will make him ; and if it loses, will ruin him. 
When the alternatives are victory, or utter destruction, a 
battle may, sometimes, still be necessary. But commerce 
has no such alternatives; only speculation proceeds upon 
them. 

If the capital is borrowed, it is as dishonest, upon such 
ventures, to risk, as to lose it. Should a man borrow a 
noble steed and ride among incitements which he knew 
would rouse up his fiery spirit to an uncontrolable heiglit, 
and borne away with wild speed, be plunged over a preci- 
pice, his destruction might excite our pity, but could not 
alter our opinion of his dishonesty. He borrowed prop- 
erty, and endangered it where he knew that it would be 
uncontrolable. 

If the capital be one's own, it can scarcely be risked 
and lost, without the ruin of other men. No man could 
blow up his store in a compact street, and destroy only 
his own. Men of business are, like threads of a fabric, 
woven together, and subject, to a great extent, to a com- 
mon fate of prosperity or adversity. I have no right to 
cut off my hand ; I defraud myself, my family, the com- 
munity, and God ; for all these have an interest in that 
hand. Neither has a man the right to throw away his 
property. He defrauds himself, his family, the com- 
munity in which he dwells ; for all these have an interest 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY. 43 

in that property. If waste is dishonesty, then every risk, 
in proportion as it approaches it, is dishonest. To 
venture, without that foresight which experience gives, 
is wrong ; and if we cannot foresee, then we must not 
venture. 

Scheming speculation demoralizes honesty, and almost 
necessitates dishonesty. He who puts his own interests 
to rash ventures, will scarcely do better for others. The 
Speculator regards the weightiest affair as only a splendid 
game. Indeed, a Speculator on the exchange, and a 
Gambler at his table, follow one vocation, only with 
different instruments. One employs cards or dice, the 
other property. The one can no more foresee the result 
of his schemes, than the other what spots will come up on 
his dice ; the calculations of both are only the chances of 
luck. Both burn with unhealthy excitement ; both are 
avaricious of gains, but careless of what they win ; both 
depend more upon fortune than skill ; they have a com- 
mon distaste for labor ; with each, right and wrong are 
only the accidents of a game ; neither would scruple in 
any hour to set his whole being on the edge of ruin, and 
going over, to pull down, if possible, a hundred others. 

The wreck of such men leaves them with a drunkard's 
appetite, and a fiend's desperation. The revulsion from 
extravagant hopes, to a certainty of midnight darkness ; 
the sensations of poverty, to him who was in fancy just 
stepping upon a princely estate ; the humiliation of glean- 
ing for cents, where he has been profuse of dollars ; the 
chagrin of seeing old competitors now above him, grin- 
ning down upon his poverty a malignant triumph ; the 
pity of pitiful men, and the neglect of such as should 
have been his friends, — and who were, while the sun- 
shine lay upon his path, — all these things, like so many 
strong winds, sweep across the soul so that it cannot rest 
in the cheerless tranquillity of honesty, but casts up mire 
and dirt. How stately the balloon rises and sails over 
continents, as over petty landscapes ! The slightest slit 
in its frail covering, sends it tumbling down, swaying 
widely, whirling and pitching hither and thither, until it 
plunges into some dark glen, out of the path of honest 
men, and too shattered to tempt even a robber. So have 
we seen a thousand men pitched down; so now, in a 



44 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

thousand places may their wrecks be seen. But still 
other balloons are framing, and the air is full of victim- 
venturers. 

If our young men are introduced to life with distaste 
for safe ways, because the sure profits are slow ; if the 
opinion becomes prevalent that all business is great, only 
as it tends to the uncertain, the extravagant, and the ro- 
mantic ; then Ave may stay our hand at once, nor waste 
labor in absurd expostulations of honesty. I had as lief 
preach humanity to a battle of eagles, as to urge honesty 
and integrity upon those who have determined to'be rich, 
and to gain it by gambling stakes, and madmen's ven- 
tures. 

All the bankruptcies of commerce are harmless com- 
pared with a bankruptcy of public morals. Should the 
Atlantic ocean break over our shores, and roll sheer 
across to the Pacific, sweeping every vestige of cultiva- 
tion, and burying our wealth, it would be a mercy, com- 
pared to that ocean-deluge of dishonesty and crime, which, 
sweeping over the whole land, has spared our wealth and 
taken our virtue. What are cornfields and vineyards, 
what are stores and manufactures, and what are gold and 
silver, and all the precious commodities of the earth, 
among beasts? — and what are men, bereft of conscience 
and honor, but beasts ? 

We will forget those things which are behind, and 
hope a more cheerful future. We turn to you, young 
men! — All good men, all patriots, turn to watch your ad- 
vance upon the stage, and to implore you to be worthy 
of yourselves, and of your revered ancestry. Oh ! ye 
favored of Heaven ! with a free land, a noble inheritance 
of wise laws, and a prodigality of wealth in prospect. — 
advance to your possessions! — May you settle down, as 
did Israel of old, a people of God in a promised and pro- 
tected land ; — true to yourselves, true to your country, 
and true to your God. 



LECTURE III 



The generation of the upright shall be blessed, wealth and riches shall 

be in his house. Fs. cxii. 2, 3. 
He that getteih riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst 

of his days, and at the end shall be a fool. Jer. xvii. 11. 

When justly obtained, and rationally used, riches are 
called a gift of God, an evidence of his favor, and a great 
reward. When gathered unjustly, and corruptly used, 
wealth is pronounced a cank'er, a rust, a fire, a curse. 
There is no contradiction, then, when the Bible per- 
suades to industry, and integrity, by a promise of riches ; 
and then dissuades from wealth, as a terrible thing, de- 
stroying soul and body. Blessings are vindictive to 
abusers, and kind to rightful users ; — they serve us, or 
rule us. Fire warms our dwelling, or consumes it. 
Steam serves man, and also destroys him. Iron, in the 
plough, the sickle, the house, the ship, is indispensable. 
The dirk, the assassin's knife, the cruel sword and the 
spear, are iron also. 

The constitution of man, and of society, alike evinces 
the design of God. • Both are made to be happier by the 
possession of riches; — their full development and perfec- 
tion are dependent, to a large extent, upon wealth. 
Without it, there can be neither books nor implements ; 
neither commerce nor arts, neither towns nor cities. It 
is a folly to denounce that, a love of which God has 
placed in man by a constitutional faculty ; that, with 
which he has associated high grades of happiness ; that, 
which has motives touching every faculty of the mind. 
Wealth is an artist : by its patronage men are encour- 
aged to paint, to carve, to design, to build and adorn ; — 
A master-mechanic: and inspires man to invent, to 
discover, to apply, to forge, and to fashion : — A husband- 

(45) 



46 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

MAN : and under its influence men rear the flock, till the 
earth, plant the vineyard, tlie field, the orchard, and the 
garden : — A manufacturer : and teaches men to card, 
to spin, to weave, to color and dress all useful fabrics : — 
A merchant : and sends forth ships, and fills ware- 
houses with their returning cargoes gathered from every 
zone. It is the scholar's patron ; sustains his leisure, 
rewards his labor, builds the college, and gathers the 
library. 

Is a man weak ? — he can buy the strong. Is he igno- 
rant? — the learned will serve his wealth. Is he rude of 
speech ? — he may procure the advocacy of the eloquent. 
The rich cannot buy honor, but honorable places they 
can ; they cannot purchase nobility, but they may its 
titles. Money cannot buy freshness of heart, but it can 
every luxury which tempts to enjoyment. Laws are its 
body-guard, and no earthly power may safely defy it ; 
either while running in the swift channels of commerce, 
or reposing in the reservoirs of ancient families. Here is 
a wonderful thing, that an inert metal, which neither 
thinks, nor feels, nor stirs, can set the whole world to 
thinking, planning, running, digging, fashioning, and 
drives on the sweaty mass with never-ending labors! 

Avarice seeks gold, not to build or buy therewith ; not 
to clothe or feed itself; not to make it an instrument of 
wisdom, of skill, of friendship, or religion. Avarice 
seeks it to heap it up ; to walk around the pile, and gloat 
upon it ; to fondle, and court, to kiss and hug the darling 
stuff to the end of life, with the homage of idolatry. 

Pride seeks it ; — for it gives power, and place, and 
titles, and exalts its possessor above his fellows. To be 
a thread in the fabric of life, just like any other thread, 
hoisted up and down by the treddle, played across by the 
shuttle, and woven tightly into the piece, this may suit 
humility, but not pride. 

Vanity seeks it; — what else can give it costly clothing, 
and rare ornaments, and stately dwellings, and showy 
equipage, and attract admiring eyes to its gaudy colors 
and costly jewels ? 

Taste seeks it; — because by it, may be had whatever is 
beautiful, or refining, or instructive. What leisure has 



SIX WARNINGS. 47 

poverty for study, and how can it collect books, manu- 
scripts, pictures, statues, coins, or curiosities? 

Love seeks it ; — to build a home full of delights for 
father, wife or child ; and, wisest of all, 

Religion seeks it ; — to make it the messenger and ser- 
vant of benevolence, to want, to suffering, and to ignor- 
ance. 

What a sight does the busy world present, as of a great 
workshop, where hope and fear, love and pride, and lust, 
and pleasure, and avarice, separate or in partnership, 
drive on the universal race for wealth: delving in the 
mine, digging in the earth, sweltering at the forge, plying 
the shuttle, ploughing the waters ; in houses, in shops, in 
stores, on the mountain-side, or in the valley ; by skill, 
by labor, by thought, by craft, by force, by traffic ; all 
men, in all places, by all labors, fair and unfair, the 
world around, busy, busy ; ever searching for wealth that 
wealth may supply their pleasures. 

As every taste and inclination may receive its gratifica- 
tion through riches, the universal and often fierce pursuit 
of it arises, not from the single impulse of avarice, but 
from the impulse of the whole mind ; and on this very ac- 
count, its pursuits should be more exactly regulated. Let 
me set up a warning over against the special dangers 
which lie along the road to riches. 

I. I warn you against thinking that riches necessarily 
confer happiness ; and poverty, unhappiness. Do not 
begin life supposing that you shall be heart-rich, when 
you are purse-rich. A man's happiness depends primarily 
upon his disposition; if that be good, riches will bring 
pleasure; but only vexation, if that be evil. To lavish 
money upon shining trifles, to make an idol of one's self 
for fools to gaze at, to rear mansions beyond our wants, to 
garnish them for display and not for use, to chatter 
through the heartless rounds of pleasure, to lounge, to 
gape, to simper and giggle : — can wealth make vanity, 
happy by such folly? If wealth descends upon avarice 
does it confer happiness ? It blights the heart, as autum- 
nal fires ravage the prairies ! The eye glows with 
greedy cunning, conscience shrivels, the light of love goes 
out, and the wretch moves amidst his coin no better, no 
happier than a loathsome reptile in a mine of gold. A 



48 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

dreary fire of self-love burns in the bosom of the avari- 
cious rich, as a hermit's flame in a ruined temple of the 
desert. The lire is kindled for no deity, and is odorous 
with no incense, but only warms the shivering anchorite. 

Wealth will do little for lust, but to hasten its corrup- 
tion. There is no more happiness in a foul heart, than 
there is health in a pestilent morass. Satisfaction is not 
made out of such stuff as fighting carousals, obscene rev- 
elry, and midnight orgies. An alligator, gorging or 
swoln with surfeit and basking in the sun, has the same 
happiness which riches bring to the man who eats to glut- 
tony, drinks to drunkenness, and sleeps to stupidity. But 
riches indeed bless that heart whose almoner is benevo- 
lence. If the taste is refined, if the affections are pure, 
if conscience is honest, if charity listens to the needy, 
and generosity relieves them ; if the public-spirited hand 
fosters all that embellishes and all that ennobles society — 
then is the rich man happy. 

On the other hand, do not suppose that poverty is a 
waste and howling wilderness. There is a poverty of vice 
— mean, loathsome, covered with all the sores of deprav- 
ity. There is a poverty of indolence — where virtues 
sleep, and passions fret and bicker. There is a poverty 
which despondency makes — a deep dungeon, in which the 
victim wears hopeless chains. May God save you from 
that ! There is a spiteful and venomous poverty, in which 
mean and cankered hearts, repairing none of their own 
losses, spit at others' prosperity, and curse the rich, — 
themselves doubly cursed by their own hearts. 

But there is a contented poverty, in which industry and 
peace rule ; and a joyful hope, which looks out into an- 
other world where riches shall neither fly nor fade. This 
poverty may possess an independent mind, a heart ambi- 
tious of usefulness, a hand quick to sow the seed of other 
men's happiness, and find its own joy in their enjoyment. 
If a serene age finds you in such poverty, it is sucli a wil- 
derness, if it be a wilderness, as that in which God led his 
chosen people, and on which he rained every day a heav- 
enly manna. 

If God open to your feet the way to wealth, enter it 
cheerfully; but remember that riches will bless or curse 
you, as your own heart determines. But if circumscribed 



SIX WARNINGS. 49 

by necessity, you are still indigent, after all your industry, 
do not scorn poverty. There is often in the hut more 
dignity than in the palace ; more satisfaction in the poor 
man's scanty fare than in the rich man's satiety. 

II. Men are warned in the Bible against making 
haste to be rich. He that hasteth to be rich hath an 
evil eye, and considereth not that poverty shall come upon 
him. This is spoken, not of the alacrity of enterprise, 
but of the precipitancy of avarice. That is an evil eye 
which leads a man into trouble by incorrect vision. 
When a man seeks to prosper by crafty tricks instead of 
careful industry ; when a man's inordinate covetousness 
pushes him across all lines of honesty that he may sooner 
clutch the prize ; when gambling speculation would reap 
where it had not strewn ; when men gain riches by 
crimes — there is an evil eye, which guides them through 
a specious prosperity, to inevitable ruin. So dependent 
is success upon patient industry, that he who seeks it 
otherwise, tempts his own ruin. A young lawyer, unwil- 
ling to wait for that practice which rewards a good repu- 
tation, or unwilling to earn that reputation by severe 
application, rushes through all the dirty paths of chicane 
to a hasty prosperity ; and he rushes out of it, by the 
dirtier paths of discovered villany. A young politician, 
scarcely waiting till the law allows his majority, sturdily 
begs for that popularity w r hich he should have patiently 
earned. In the ferocious conflicts of political life, cun- 
ning, intrigue, falsehood, slander, vituperative violence, 
at first sustain his pretentions, and at last demolish them. 
It is thus in all the ways of traffic, in all the arts, and 
trades. That prosperity which grows like the mushroom, 
is as poisonous as the mushroom. Few men are de- 
stroyed ; but many destroy themselves. 

When God sends wealth to bless men he sends it grad- 
ually like a gentle rain. When God sends riches to 
punish men, they come tumultously, like a roaring tor- 
rent, tearing up landmarks and sweeping all before them 
in promiscuous ruin. Almost every evil which environs 
the path to wealth, springs from that criminal haste 
which substitutes adroitness for industry, and trick for 
toil. 

III. Let me warn you against covetousness. Thou 
4 



50 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

shalt not covet, is the law by which God sought to bless a 
favorite people. Covetousness is greediness of money. 
The Bible meets it with significant woes,* by God's 
hatred,^ by solemn warnings^ by denu7iciations,§ by 
exclusion from Heaven.^ This pecuniary gluttony comes 
upon the competitors for wealth insidiously. At first, 
business is only a means of paying for our pleasures. 
Vanity soon whets the appetite for money, to sustain her 
parade and competition, to gratify her piques and jeal- 
ousies. Pride throws in fuel for a brighter flame. Vin- 
dictive hatreds often augment the passion, until thq 
whole soul glows as a fervid furnace, and the body is 
driven as a boat whose ponderous engine trembles with 
the utmost energy of steam. 

Covetousness is unprofitable. It defeats its own pur- 
poses. It breeds restless daring, where it is dangerous 
to venture. It works the mind to fever, so that its judg- 
ments are not cool, nor its calculations calm. Greed of 
money is like fire ; the more fuel it has, the hotter it 
burns. Everything conspires to intensify the heat. Loss 
excites by desperation, and gain by exhilaration. When 
there is fever in the blood, there is fire on the brain ; and 
courage turns to rashness, and rashness runs to ruin. 

Covetousness breeds misery. The sight of houses bet- 
ter than our own, of dress beyond our means, of jewels 
costlier than we may wear, of stately equipage, and rare 
curiosities beyond our reach, these hatch the viper brood 
of covetous thoughts ; vexing the poor — who would be 
rich ; tormenting the rich — who would be richer. The 
covetous man pines to see pleasure ; is sad in the pres- 
ence of cheerfulness ; and the joy of the world is his sor- 
row, because all the happiness of others is not his. I do 
not wonder that God abhors^ him. He inspects his heart, 
as he would a cave full of noisome birds, or a nest of rat- 
tling reptiles, and loathes the sight of its crawling tenants. 
To the covetous man life is a nightmare, and God lets him 
wrestle with it as best he may. Mammon might build its 
palace on such a heart, and Pleasure bring all its revelry 
there, and Honor all its garlands — it would be like pleas- 
ures in a sepulchre, and garlands on a tomb. 

* Hab. ii. 9. t IN. x. 3. % Luke xii. 15. § 1 Cur. y, 10, U, LsuL vjj, 
XI. J 1 Cor. vi. 10. % Ps. x. 3. 



SIX WARNINGS. 51 

The creed of the greedy man is brief and consistent ; 
and unlike other creeds, is both subscribed and believed. 
The chief end of man is to glorify gold and enjoy it for- 
ever : life is. a time afforded man to grow rich in: death, 
the winding up of specidations : heaven, a mart with 
golden streets : hell, a 'place where shiftless men are punished 
with everlasting poverty. 

God searched among the beasts for a fit emblem of 
contempt, to describe the end of a covetous prince : He 
shall be buried with the burial of an Ass, drawn and cast 
forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem.*- He whose heart is 
turned to greediness, who sweats through life under the 
load of labor only to heap up money, and dies without 
private usefulness, or a record of public service, is no 
better, in God's estimation, than a paGk-horse, — a mule, 
— an ass ; a creature for burdens, to be beaten, and 
worked and killed, and dragged off by another like him, 
abandoned to the birds and forgotten. 

HE IS BURIED WITH THE BURIAL OF AN ASS ! This is 

the miser's epitaph — and yours, young man ! if you 
earn it by covetousness ! 

IV. I warn you against selfishness. Of riches it is 
written : Tliere is no good in them but for a man to re- 
joice and to do good in his life. If men absorb their 
property, it parches the heart so that it will not give forth 
blossoms and fruits, but only thorns and thistles. If men 
radiate and reflect upon others some rays of the prosper- 
ity which shines upon themselves, wealth is not only 
harmless, but full of advantage. 

The thoroughfares of wealth are crowded by a throng 
who jostle, and thrust, and conflict, like men in the 
tumult of a battle. The rules which crafty old men 
breathe into the ears of the young are full of selfish wis- 
dom ; — teaching them that the chief end of man is to har- 
vest, to husband, and to hoard. Their, life is made obe- 
dient to a scale of preferences graded from a sordid ex- 
perience ; a scale which has penury for one extreme, and 
parsimony for the other ; and the virtues are ranked be- 
tween them as they are relatively fruitful in physical 
thrift. Every crevice of the heart is caulked with cost- 
ive maxims, so that no precious drop of wealth may leak 

* Jer. xxii. 19. 



52 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

out through inadvertent generosities. Indeed, generosity 
and all its company are thought to be little better than 
pilfering picklocks, against whose wiles the heart is pre- 
pared, like a coin-vault, with iron-clenched walls of stone, 
and impenetrable doors. Mercy, pity, and sympathy, are 
vagrant fowls ; and that they may not scale the fence be- 
tween a man and his neighbors, their wings are clipped 
by the miser's master-maxim — Charity begins at 
home. It certainly stays there. 

The habit of regarding men as dishonest rivals, dries 
up, also, the kindlier feelings. A shrewd trafficker must 
watch his fellows, be suspicious of their proffers, vigilant 
of their movements, and jealous of their pledges. The 
world's way is a very crooked way, and a very guileful 
one. Its travelers creep by stealth, or walk craftily, or 
glide in concealments, or appear in specious guises. He 
who stands out-watching among men, to pluck his advan- 
tage from their hands, or to lose it by their wiles, comes 
at length to regard all men as either enemies or instru- 
ments. Of course he thinks it fair to strip an enemy ; 
and just as fair to use an instrument. Men are no more 
to him than bales, boxes, or goods — mere matters of 
traffic. If he ever relaxes his commercial rigidity to in- 
dulge in the fictions of poetry, it is when, perhaps on 
Sundays or at a funeral, he talks quite prettily about 
friendship, and generosity, and philanthropy. The tight- 
est ship may leak in a storm, and an unbartered penny 
may escape from this man, when the surprise of the 
solicitation gives no time for thought. 

The heart cannot wholly petrify without some honest 
revulsions. Opiates are administered to it. This busi- 
ness-man tells his heart that it is beset by unscrupulous 
enemies ; that beneficent virtues are doors to let them in ; 
that liberality is bread to given to one's foes ; and selfish- 
ness only self-defence. At the same time, he enriches 
the future with generous promises. While he is getting 
rich, he cannot afford to be liberal ; but when once he is 
rich, ah ! how liberal he means to be ! — as though habits 
could be unbuckled like a girdle, and were not rather 
steel-bands riveted, defying the edge of any man's resolu- 
tion, and clasping the heart with invincible servitude ! 

Thorough selfishness destroys or paralyzes enjoyment. 



SIX WARNINGS. 53 

A heart made selfish by the contest for wealth is like a 
citadel stormed in war. The banner of victory waves 
over dilapidated walls, desolate chambers, and magazines 
riddled with artillery. Men, covered with sweat, and 
begrimed with toil, expect to find joy in a heart reduced 
by selfishness to a smouldering heap of ruins. 

I warn every aspirant for wealth against the infernal 
canker of selfishness. It will eat out of the heart with 
the fire of hell, or bake it harder than a stone. The 
heart of avaricious old age stands like a bare rock in a 
bleak wilderness, and there is no rod of authority, nor in- 
cantation of pleasure, which can draw from it one crystal 
drop to quench the raging thirst for satisfaction. But 
listen not to my words alone ; hear the solemn voice of 
God, pronouncing doom upon the selfish : Tour riches 
are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Tour 
gold and silver is cankered ; and the rust of them shall be 
a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were 
fire.* 

V. I warn you against seeking wealth by covert 
dishonesty. The everlasting plea of petty fraud or 
open dishonesty, is, its necessity or profitableness. 

It is neither necessary nor profitable. The hope is a 
deception, and the excuse a lie. The severity of compe- 
tition affords no reason for dishonesty in" word or deed. 
Competition is fair, but not all methods of competition. A 
mechanic may compete with a mechanic, by rising earlier, 
by greater industry, by greater skill, more punctuality, 
greater thoroughness, by employing better materials ; by 
a more scrupulous fidelity to promises, and by facility in 
accommodation. A merchant may study to excel com- 
petitors, by a better selection of goods, by more obliging 
manners, by more rigid honesty, by a better knowledge 
of the market, by better taste in the arrangement of his 
goods. Industry, honesty, kindness, taste, genius and 
skill, are the only materials of all rightful competition. 

But whenever you have exerted all your knowledge, 
all your skill, all your industry, with long continued 
patience and without success, then, it is clear, not that 
you may proceed to employ trick and cunning, but that 
you must stop. God has put before you a bound which 

*James v, 2, 3. 



54 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

no man may overleap. There may be the appearance of 
gain on the knavish side of the Avail of honor. Traps are 
always baited with food sweet to the taste of the intended 
victim ; and Satan is too crafty a trapper not to scatter 
the pitfall of dishonesty with some shining particles of 
gold. 

But what if fraud were necessary to permanent success ? 
will you take success upon such terms ? I perceive, too 
often, that young men regard the argument as ended, 
when they prove to themselves that they cannot be rich 
without guile. Very well ; then be poor. But if you 
prefer money to honor, you may well swear fidelity to the 
villain's law ! If it is not base and detestable to gain by 
equivocation, neither is it by lying ; and if not by lying, 
neither is it by stealing, and if not by stealing, neither 
by robbery or murder. Will you tolerate the loss of 
honor and honesty for the sake of profit ? For exactly 
this, Judas betrayed Christ, and Arnold his country. 
Because it is the only way to gain some pleasure, may a 
wife yield her honor ? — a politician sell himself? — a 
statesman barter his counsel ? — a judge take bribes ? — a 
juryman forswear himself? — or a witness commit 
perjury? Then virtues are marketable commodities, and 
may be hung up, like meat in the shambles, or sold 
at auction to the highest bidder. 

Who can afford a victory gained by a defeat of his 
virtue? What prosperity can compensate the plundering 
of a man's heart ? A good name is rather to be chosen 
than great riches : sooner or later every man will find 
it so. 

With what dismay would Esau have sorrowed for a lost 
birthright, had he lost also the pitiful mess of pottage for 
which he sold it? With what double despair would 
Judas have clutched at death, if he had not obtained even 
the thirty pieces of silver which were to pay his infamy ? 
And with what utter confusion will all dishonest men, 
who were learning of the Devil to defraud other men, 
find at length, that he was giving his most finished lesson 
of deception, — by cheating them! and making poverty 
and disgrace the only fruit of the lies and frauds which 
were framed for profit! Getting treasure by a lying 
tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death. 



SIX WARNINGS. 55 

Men have only looked upon the beginning of a career 
when they pronounce upon the profitableness of dis- 
honesty. Many a ship goes gaily out of harbor which 
never returns again. That only is a good voyage which 
brings home the richly freighted ship. God explicitly 
declares that an inevitable curse of dishonesty shall fall 
upon the criminal himself, or upon his children : He that 
by usury, and unjust gain, increaseth his substance, he 
shall gather it for him that will pity the poor. His chil- 
dren are far from safety, and they are crushed in the gate. 
Neither is there any to deliver them : the robber swalloweth 
up their substance. 

Iniquities, whose end is dark as midnight, are permit- 
ted to open bright as the morning ; the most poisonous 
bud unfolds with brilliant colors. So the threshold of 
perdition is burnished till it glows like the gate of para- 
dise. There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but 
the ends thereof are the ways of death. This is dishonesty 
described to the life. At first you look down upon a 
smooth and verdant path covered with flowers, perfumed 
with odors, and overhung with fruits and grateful shade. 
Its long perspective is illusive ; for it ends quickly in a 
precipice, over which you pitch into irretrievable ruin. 

For the sources of this inevitable disaster, we need 
look no further than the effect of dishonesty upon a man's 
own mind. The difference between cunning and wisdom, 
is the difference between acting by the certain and immu- 
table laws of nature, and acting by the shifts of temporary 
expedients. An honest man puts his prosperity upon the 
broad current of those laws which govern the world. A 
crafty man means to pry between them, to steer across 
them, to take advantage of them. An honest man steers 
by God's chart ; and a dishonest man by his own. Which 
is the most liable to perplexities and fatal mistakes of 
judgment ? Wisdom steadily ripens to the end ; cun- 
ning is worm-bitten, and soon drops from the tree. 

I could repeat the names of many men, (every village 
has such, and they swarm in cities,) who are skilful, in- 
defatigable, but audaciously dishonest ; and for a time 
they seemed going straight forward to the realm of wealth. 
I never knew a single one to avoid ultimate ruin. Men 
who act under dishonest passions, are like men riding 



56 LECTURES TO TOUXG MEX. 

fierce horses. It is .not always with the rider when or 
where he shall stop. If for "his sake, the steed dashes 
wildly on while the road is smooth ; so, turning suddenly 
into a rough and dangerous way, the rider must go madly 
forward for the steed's sake, — now chafed, his mettle up, 
his eye afire, and beast and burden like a bolt speeding 
through the air, until some bound or sudden fall tumble 
both to the ground — a crushed and mangled mass. 

A man pursuing plain ends by honest means may be 
troubled on every side, yet not distressed : perplexed, but not 
in despair : persecuted, but not forsaken : cast down, but 
not destroyed. But those that pursue their advantage by 
a round of dishonesties, when fear comeih as a desolation, 
and destruction as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish 
cometh upon them, . . . shall eat of the fruit of their own 
way, and be filled with their own devices ; for the turning 
away of the simple shall slay them ; and the prosperity of 
fools shall destroy them. 

VI. The Bible overflows with warnings to those who 
gain wealth by violent extortion, or by any flagrant vil- 
lany. Some men stealthily slip from under them the pos- 
sessions of the poor. Some beguile the simple and heed- 
less of their patrimony. Some tyrannize over ignorance, 
and extort from it its fair domains. Some steal away 
the senses, and intoxicate the mind— the more readily 
and largely to cheat ; some set their traps in all the dark 
places of men's adversity, and prowl for wrecks all alon^ 
the shores on which men's fortunes go to pieces. Men 
will take advantage of extreme misery, to wring it with 
more griping tortures, and compel it to the extremest 
sacrifices; and stop only when no more can be borne by 
the sufferer, or nothing more extracted by the usurer. The 
earth is as full of avaricious monsters, as the tropical 
forests are of beasts of prey. But amid all the lions, and 
tigers, and hyenas, is seen the stately bulk of three hucre 
Behemoths. ° 

The first Behemoth is that incarnate fiend who navi- 
gates the ocean to traffic in human misery and freight 
with the groans and tears of agony. Distant shores are 
sought with cords and manacles; villages surprised with 
torch and sword ; and the loathsome ship swallows what 
the sword and the fire have spared. By night and day the 



SIX WARNINGS. 57 

voyage speeds, and the storm spares wretches more re- 
lentless than itself. The wind wafts and the sun lights 
the path for a ship whose log is written in blood. Hid- 
eous profits, dripping red, even at this hour, lure these 
infernal miscreants to their remorseless errands. The 
thirst of gold inspires such courage, skill, and cunning 
vigilance, that the thunders of four allied navies cannot 
sink the infamous fleet. 

What wonder? Just such a Behemoth of rapacity- 
stalks among us, and fattens on the blood of our sons. 
Men there are, who, without a pang or gleam of remorse, 
will coolly wait for character to rot, and health to 
sink, and means to melt, that they may suck up the last 
drop of the victim's blood. Our streets are full of reeling 
wretches whose bodies and manhood and souls have been 
crushed and put to the press, that monsters might wring 
out of them a wine for their infernal thirst. The agony 
of midnight massacre, the phrensy of the ship's dungeon, 
the living death of the middle passage, the wails of sepa- 
ration, and the dismal torpor of hopeless servitude — are 
these found only in the piracy of the slave trade ? They 
all are among us ! worse assassinations ! worse dragging 
to a prison-ship ! worse groans ringing from the fetid 
hold ! worse separations of families ! worse bondage of 
intemperate men, enslaved by that most inexorable of all 
task-masters — sensual habit ! 

The third Behemoth is seen lurking among the Indian 
savages, and bringing the arts of learning, and the skill 
of civilization, to aid in plundering the debauched barbar- 
ian. The cunning, murdering, scalping Indian, is no 
match for the Christian white man. Compared with the 
midnight knavery of men reared in schools, rocked by 
religion, tempered and taught by the humane institutions 
of liberty and civilization, all the craft of the savage is 
twilight. Vast estates have been accumulated, without 
having an honest farthing in them. Our Penitentiaries 
might be sent to school to the Treaty-grounds and 
Council-grounds. Smugglers and swindlers might humble 
themselves in the presence of Indian traders. All the 
crimes against property known to our laws flourish with 
unnatural vigor ; and some, unknown to civilized villany. 
To swindle ignorance, to overreach simplicity, to lie 



58 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

without scruple to .any extent, from mere implication 
down to perjury ; to tempt the savages to rob each other, 
and to receive their plunder ; to sell goods at incredible 
prices to the sober Indian, then to intoxicate him, and 
steal them all back by a sham bargain, to be sold again, 
and stolen again ; to employ falsehood, lust, threats, 
whisky, and even the knife and the pistol ; in short to 
consume the Indian's substance by every vice and crime 
possible to an unprincipled heart inflamed with an un- 
salable rapacity, unwatched by Justice, and unrestrained 
by Law — this it is to be an Indian Trader. I would 
rather inherit the bowels of Vesuvius, or make my bed in 
Etna, than own those estates which have been scalped 
off from human beings as the hunter strips a beaver of its 
fur. Of all these, of all who gain possessions by extor- 
tion and robbery, never let yourself be envious ! I was 
envious at the foolish, when I sato the prosperity of the 
wicked. Their eyes stand out with fatness : they have more 
than heart could wish. They are corrupt, and speak wick- 
edly concerning oppression. Tltey have set their mouth 
against the heaven, and their tongue walketh through the 
earth. When I sought to know this, it was too painful for 
me, until I went into the sanctuary. Surely thou didst set 
them in slippery places ! thou castedst them down into de- 
struction as in a moment ' Tltey are utterly consumed 
with terrors. As a dream when one awaketh, so, Lord ! 
when thou awakest. thou shalt despise their image! 

I would not bear their heart who have so made money, 
were the world a solid globe of gold, and mine. I would 
not stand for them in the judgment, were every star of 
heaven a realm of riches, and mine. I would not walk 
with them the burning marl of hell, to bear their tor- 
ment, and utter their groans, for the throne of God 
itself. 

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. 
Riches got by deceit, cheat no man so much as the get- 
ter. Riches bought with guile, God will pay for with 
vengeance. Riches got by fraud, are dug out of one's 
own heart, and destroy the mine. Unjust riches curse 
the owner in getting, in keeping, in transmitting. They 
curse his children in their father's memory, in their own 



SIX WARNINGS. 59 

wasteful habits, in drawing around them all bad men to 
be their companions. 

While I do not discourage your search for wealth, I 
warn you that it is not a cruise upon level seas, and under 
bland skies. You advance where ten thousand are 
broken in pieces before they reach the mart ; where those 
who reach it are worn out, by their labors, past enjoying 
their riches. You seek a land pleasant to the sight, but 
dangerous to the feet ; a land of fragrant w r inds, which 
lull to security; of golden fruits, which are poisonous; 
of glorious hues, which dazzle and mislead. 

You may be rich and be pure; but it will cost you a 
struggle. You maybe rich and go to heaven ; but ten, 
doubtless, will sink beneath their riches, where one breaks 
through them to heaven. If you have entered this shin- 
ing way, begin to look for snares and traps. Go not 
careless of your danger, and provoking it. See, on 
every side of you, how many there are who seal God's 
word with their blood: — „ 

lliey that will be rich, fall into temptation and a snare, 
and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men 
in destruction and perdition. For the love of Money is 
the root of all evil, ivhich, while, some have coveted after, 
they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves 
through with many sorrows. 



LECTURE IV. 



My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. Prov. i. 10. 

He who is allured to embrace evil under some engag- 
ing form of beauty, or seductive appearance of good, is 
enticed. A man is tempted to what he knows to be sin- 
ful ; he is enticed where the evil appears to be innocent. 
The Enticer wins his way by bewildering the moral 
sense, setting false lights ahead of the imagination, paint- 
ing disease with the hues of health, making impurity to 
glow like innocency, strewing the broad-road with flowers, 
lulling its travellers with soothing music, hiding all its 
chasms, covering its pitfalls, and closing its long per- 
spective with the mimic glow of Paradise. 

The young are seldom tempted to outright wickedness; 
evil comes to them as an enticement. The honest gener- 
osity and fresh heart of youth would revolt from open 
meanness and undisguised vice. The Adversary con- 
forms his wiles to their nature He tempts them to the 

basest deeds by beginning with innocent ones, gliding to 
more exceptionable, and finally, to positively wicked 
ones. All our warnings then must be against the vernal 
beauty of vice. Its autumn and winter none wish. It 
is my purpose to describe the enticement of particular 
men upon the young. 

Every youth knows that there are dangerous men 
abroad who would injure him by lying, by slander, by 
over-reaching and plundering him. From such they 
have little to fear, because they are upon their guard. 
Few imagine that they have anything to dread from 
those who have no designs against them ; yet such is the 
instinct of imitation, so insensibly does the example of 
men steal upon us and warp our conduct to their like- 

(61) 



62 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

ness, that the young often receive a deadly injury from 
men with whom they never spoke. As all bodies in 
nature give out or receive caloric until there is an 
equilibrium of temperature, so there is a radiation of 
character upon character. Our thoughts, our tastes, our 
emotions, our partialities, our prejudices, and finally, our 
conduct and habits, are insensibly changed by the silent 
influence of men who never once directly tempted us, or 
even knew the effect which they produced. I shall draw 
for your inspection some of those dangerous men, whose 
open or silent enticement has availed against thousands, 
and will be exerted upon thousands more. 

I. The wit. It is sometimes said by phlegmatic 
theologians that Christ never laughed, but often wept. I 
shall not quarrel with the assumption. I only say that 
men have within them a faculty of mirthf ulness which 
God created. I suppose it was meant for use. Those 
who do not feel the impulsion of this faculty, are not the 
ones to sit in judgment upon those who do. It would be 
very absurd for an owl in an ivy bush, to read lectures on 
optics to an eagle ; or for a mole to counsel a lynx on the 
sin of sharp-sightedness. He is divinely favored who may 
trace a silver vein in all the affairs of life ; see sparkles 
of light in the gloomiest scenes ; and absolute radiance in 
those which are bright. There are in the clouds ten 
thousand inimitable forms and hues to be found nowhere 
else ; there are in plants and trees beautiful shapes and 
endless varieties of color; there are in flowers minute 
pencilings of exquisite shade ; in fruits a delicate bloom, 
— like a veil, making the face of beauty more beautiful ; 
sporting among the trees, and upon the flowers, are tiny 
insects — gems which glow like living diamonds. Ten 
thousand eyes stare full upon these things and see noth- 
ing ; and yet thus the Divine Artist has finished his 
matchless work. Thus, too, upon all the labors of life, 
the events of each hour, the course of good or evil; upon 
each action, or word, or attitude ; upon all the endless 
changes transpiring among myriad men, there is a deli- 
cate grace, or bloom, or sparkle, or radiance, which 
catches the eve of Wit, and delights it with appearances 
which arc to the weightier matters of life, what odor, 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 63 

colors, and symmetry, are to the marketable and com- 
mercial properties of matter. 

A mind imbued with this feeling is full of dancing 
motes, such as we see moving in sunbeams when they 
pour through some shutter into a dark room ; and when 
the sights and conceptions of wit are uttered in words 
they diffuse upon others that pleasure whose brightness 
shines upon its own cheerful imagination. 

It is not strange that the Wit is a universal favorite. 
All companies rejoice in his presence, watch for his 
words, repeat his language. He moves like a comet 
whose incomings and outgoings are uncontrollable. He 
astonishes the regular stars with the eccentricity of his 
orbit, and flirts his long tail athwart the heaven without 
the slightest misgivings that it will be troublesome, and 
coquets the very sun with audacious familiarity. When 
wit is unperverted, it lightens labor, makes the very face 
of care to shine, diffuses cheerfulness among men, multi- 
plies the sources of harmless enjoyment, gilds the dark 
things of life, and heightens the lustre of the brightest. 
If perverted, wit becomes an instrument of malevolence, 
it gives a deceitful coloring to vice, it reflects a semblance 
of truth upon error, and distorts the features of real truth 
by false lights. 

The Wit is liable to indolence by relying upon his 
genius; to vanity, by the praise which is offered as in- 
cense ; to malignant sarcasm, to revenge his affronts ; to 
dissipation, from the habit of exhilaration, and from the 
company which court him. The mere Wit is only a hu- 
man bauble. He is to life what bells are to horses, not 
expected to draw the load, but only to jingle while the 
horses draw. 

The young often repine at their own native dulness ; 
and since God did not choose to endow them with this 
shining quality, they will make it for themselves. Forth- 
with they are smitten with the itch of imitation. Their 
ears purvey to their mouth and borrowed jest ; their eyes 
note the Wit's fashion, and the awkward youth clumsily 
apes, in a side circle, the Wit's deft and graceful gesture, 
the smooth smile, the roguish twinkle, the sly look — 
much as Caliban would imitate Ariel. Every commu- 
nity is supplied with self-made Wits. One retails other 



64 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

men's sharp witticisms, as a Jew puts off thread-bare 
garments. Another roars over his own brutal quotations 
of Scripture. Another invents a witticism by a logical 
deduction of circumstances, and sniffs and giggles over 
the result as complacently as if other men laughed too. 
Others lie in wait around your conversation to trip up 
some word, or strike a light out of some sentence. Oth- 
ers fish in dictionaries for pitiful puns ; — and all fulfil the 
prediction of Isaiah : Ye shall conceive chaff, and bring 
forth stubble. 

It becomes a mania. Each school has its allusions, 
each circle has its apish motion, each companionhood its 
park of wit -artillery; and we find street-wit, shop-wit, 
auction-wit, school-wit, fool's-wit, whisky-wit, stable-wit, 
and almost every kind of wit, but mother-wit ; — puns, 
quibbles, catches, would-be-jests, thread-bare stories, and 
gew-gaw tinsel, — everything but the real diamond, which 
sparkles simply because God made it so that it could not 
help sparkling. Real, native mirthfulness is like a pleas- 
ant rill which quietly wells up in some verdant nook, and 
steals out from among reeds and willows noiselessly, and 
is seen far down the meadow, as much by the fruitfulness 
of its edges in flowers, as by its own glimmering light. 

Let every one beware of the insensible effect of witty 
men upon him , they gild lies, so that base coin may pass 
for true ; that which is grossly wrong, wit may make fas- 
cinating; when no argument could persuade you, the 
coruscations of wit may dazzle and blind you ; when duty 
presses you, the threatenings of this human lightning may 
make you afraid to do right. Remember that the very 
best office of wit, is only to lighten the serious labors of 
life ; that it is only a torch, by which men may cheer the 
gloom of a dark way. "When it sets up to be your coun- 
sellor or your guide, it is the fool's fire, flitting irregularly 
and leading you into the quag or morass. The great 
Dramatist represents a witty sprite to have put an ass' 
head upon a man's shoulders; beware that you do not let 
this mischievous sprite put an ape's head upon yours. 

If God has not given you this quicksilver, no art can 
make it ; nor need you regret it. The stone, the wood, 
and the iron are a thousand times more valuable to society 
than pearls and diamonds and rare gems ; and sterling 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 65 

sense, and industry, and integrity, are better a thousand 
times, in the hard work of living, than the brilliance of 

WIT. 

II. There is a character which I shall describe as the 
Humorist. I do not employ the term to designate one 
who indulges in that pleasantest of all wit — latent wit ; 
but to describe a creature who conceals a coarse animalism 
under a brilliant, jovial exterior. The dangerous humor- 
ist is of a plump condition, evincing the excellent diges- 
tion of a good eater, and answering very well to the 
Psalmist's description : His eyes stand out with fatness ; 
he is not in trouble as other men are ; he has more than heart 
could wish, and his tongue walJceth through the earth. What- 
ever is pleasant in ease, whatever is indulgent in morals, 
whatever is solacing in luxury; the jovial few, the con- 
vivial many, the glass, the cards, the revel, and midnight 
uproar, — these are his delights. His manners are easy 
and agreeable; his face redolent of fun and good nature ; 
his whole air that of a man fond of the utmost possible 
bodily refreshment. Withal, he is sufficiently circumspect 
and secretive of his course, to maintain a place in genteel 
society ; for that is a luxury. He is not a glutton, but a 
choice eater. He is not a gross drinker, only a gentle- 
manly consumer of every curious compound of liquor. 
He has travelled ; he can tell you which, in every city, is 
the best bar, the best restaurateur, the best stable. He 
knows every theatre, each actor ; particularly is he versed 
in the select morsels of the scandalous indulgence peculiar 
to each. He knows every race-course, every nag, the 
history of all the famous matches, and the pedigree of 
every distinguished horse. The whole vocabulary of 
pleasure is vernacular, — its wit, its slang, its watchwords, 
and blackletter literature. He is a profound annalist of 
scandal ; every stream of news, clear or muddy, disem- 
bogues into the gulf of his prodigious memory. He can 
tell you, after living but a week in a city, who gambles, 
when, for what sums, and with what fate ; who is impure, 
who was, who is suspected, who is not suspected — but 
ought to be. He is a morbid anatomist of morals ; a bril- 
liant flesh-fly — unerring to detect taint. 

Like other men, he loves admiration and desires to ex- 
tend his influence. All these manifold accomplishments 
5 



66 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

are exhibited before the callow young. That he may se- 
cure a train of useful followers, he is profuse of money ; 
and moves among them with an easy, insinuating frank- 
ness, a never-ceasing gaiety, so spicy with fun, so divert- 
ing with stories, so full of little hits, sly innuendoes, or 
solemn wit, with now and then a rare touch of dexterous 
mimicry, and the whole so pervaded by the indescribable 
flavor, the changing hues of humor, — that the young are 
bewildered with idolatrous admiration. What gay 
young man, who is old enough to admire himself and be 
ashamed of his parents, can resist a man so bedewed with 
humor, narrating exquisite stories with such mock gravity, 
with such slyness of mouth, and twinkling of the eye, 
with such grotesque attitudes, and significant gestures? 
He is declared to be the most remarkable man in the 
world. Now take off this man's dress, put out the one 
faculty of mirthfulness, and he will stand disclosed with- 
out a single positive virtue ! With strong appetites 
deeply indulged, hovering perpetually upon the twilight 
edge of every vice; and whose wickedness is only not 
apparent, because it is garnished with flowers and garlands ; 
who is not despised, only because his various news, art- 
fully told, keep us in good humor with ourselves ! At 
one period of youthful life, this creature's influence sup- 
plants that of eYerj other man. There is an absolute 
fascination in him which awakens a craving in the mind 
to be of his circle ; plain duties become drudgery, home 
has no light ; life at its ordinary key is monotonous, 
and must be screwed up to the concert pitch of this 
wonderful genius ! As he tells his stories, so with a 
wretched grimace of imitation, apprentices will try to tell 
them ; as he gracefully swings through the street, they 
will roll ; they will leer because he stares genteelly ; he 
sips, they guzzle — and talk impudently, because he talks 
with easy confidence. He walks erect, they strut ; he 
lounges, they loll ; he is less than a man, and they become 
even less than he. Copper-rings, huge blotches of breast- 
pins, wild streaming handkerchiefs, jaunty hats, odd 
clothes, superfluous walking-sticks, ill-uttered oaths, stupid 
jokes, and blundering pleasantries — these are the first 
fruits of imitation! There are various grades of it, from 
the office, store, shop, street, clear down to the hostlery 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 67 

and stable. Our cities are filled with these juvenile non- 
descript monsters, these compounds of vice, low wit, and 
vulgarity. The original is morally detestable, and the 
counterfeit is a very base imitation of a very base thing ; 
the dark shadow of a very ugly substance. 

III. The Cynic. The Cynic is one who never sees a 
good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. 
He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to 
light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game. 
The Cynic puts all human actions into only two classes 
— openly bad, and secretly bad. All virtue and generos- 
ity and disinterestedness are merely the appearance of 
good, but selfish at the bottom. He holds that no man 
does a good thing except for profit. The effect of his 
conversation upon your feelings is to chill and sear them ; 
to send you away sore and morose. His criticisms and 
innuendoes fall indiscriminately upon every lovely thing, 
like frost upon flowers. If a man is said to be pure and 
chaste, he will answer : Yes, in the day time. If a woman 
is pronounced virtuous, he will reply : yes, as yet. Mr. 
A. is a religious man : yes, on Sundays. Mr. B. has just 
joined the church : certainly ; the elections are coming on. 
The minister of the gospel is called an example of dili- 
gence : It is his trade. Such a man is generous : of other 
men's money. This man is obliging : to lull suspicion 
and cheat you. That man is upright : because he is green. 
Thus his eye strains out every good quality and takes in 
only the bad. To him religion is hypocrisy, honesty a 
preparation for fraud, virtue only want of opportunity, 
and undeniable purity, asceticism. The live-long day he 
will coolly sit with sneering lip, uttering sharp speeches 
in the quietest manner, and in polished phrase, transfix- 
ing every character which is presented : His words are 
softer than oil, yet are they drawn swords. 

All this, to the young, seems a wonderful knowledge 
of human nature ; they honor a man who appears to have 
found out mankind. They begin to indulge themselves in 
flippant sneers ; and with supercilious brow, and impu- 
dent tongue, w r agging to an empty brain, call to naught 
the wise, the long tried, and the venerable. 

I do believe that man is corrupt enough ; but some- 
thing of good has survived his wreck ; something of evil 



68 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

religion lias restrained, and something partially restored ; 
yet, I look upon the human heart as a mountain of fire. I 
dread its crater. I tremble when I see its lava roll the 
fiery stream. Therefore, I am the more glad, if upon 
the old crust of past eruptions, I can find a single flower 
springing up. So far from rejecting appearances of vir- 
tue in the corrupt heart of a depraved race, I am eager 
to see their light as ever mariner was to see a star in a 
stormy night. 

Moss will grow upon gravestones ; the ivy will cling to 
the mouldering pile ; the mistletoe springs from the dying 
branch ; and, God be praised, something green, some- 
thing fair to the sight and grateful to the heart, will yet 
twine around and grow out of the seams and cracks of 
the desolate temple of the human heart ! 

Who could walk through Thebes, Palmyra, or Petraea, 
and survey the wide waste of broken arches, crumbled 
altars, fallen pillars, effaced cornices, toppling walls, and 
crushed statues, with no feelings but those of contempt? 
Who, unsorrowing, could see the stork's nest upon the 
carved pillar, satyrs dancing on marble pavements, and 
scorpions nestling where beauty once dwelt, and dragons 
the sole tenants of royal palaces ? Amid such melan- 
choly magnificence, even the misanthrope might weep ! 
If here and there an altar stood unbruised, or a graven 
column unblemished, or a statue nearly perfect, he might 
well feel love for a man-wrought stone, so beautiful, when 
all else is so dreary and desolate. Thus, though man is 
as a desolate city, and his passions are as the wild beasts 
of the wilderness howling in kings' palaces, yet he is 
God's workmanship, and a thousand touches of exquisite 
beauty remain. Since Christ hath put his sovereign hand 
to restore man's ruin, many points are remoulded, and the 
fair form of a new fabric already appears growing from 
the ruins, and the first faint flame is glimmering upon the 
restored altar. 

It is impossible to indulge in such habitual severity of 
opinion upon our fellow-men, without injuring the tender- 
ness and delicacy of our own feelings. A man will be 
what his most cherished feelings are. If lie encourage a 
noble generosity, every feeling will be enriched by it ; if 
he nurse bitter and envenomed thoughts, his own spirit 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 69 

will absorb the poison ; and he will crawl among men as 
a burnished adder, whose life is mischief, and whose er- 
rand is death. 

Although experience should correct the indiscriminate 
confidence of the young, no experience should render 
them callous to goodness wherever seen. He who hunts 
for flowers, will find flowers ; and he who loves weeds, 
may find weeds. Let it be remembered, that no man, 
who is not himself mortally diseased, will have a relish 
for disease in others. A swoln wretch, blotched all over 
with leprosy, may grin hideously at every wart or ex- 
crescence upon beauty. A wholesome man will be pained 
at it, and seek not to notice it. Reject, then, the morbid 
ambition of the Cynic, or cease to call yourself a man ! 

IV. I fear that few villages exist without a specimen 
of the Libertine. 

His errand into this world is to explore every depth 
of sensuality, and collect upon himself the foulness of 
every one. He is proud to be vile ; his ambition is to be 
viler than other men. Were we not confronted almost 
daily by such wretches, it would be hard to believe that 
any could exist, to whom purity and decency were a 
burden, and only corruption a delight. This creature has 
changed his nature, until only that which disgusts a pure 
mind pleases his. He is lured by the scent of carrion. 
His coarse feelings, stimulated by gross excitants, are in- 
sensible to delicacy. The exquisite bloom, the dew and 
freshness of the flowers of the heart which delight both 
good men and God himself, he gazes upon, as a Behe- 
moth would gaze enraptured upon a prairie of flowers. It 
is so much pasture. The forms, the odors, the hues are 
only a mouthful for his terrible appetite. Therefore, his 
breath blights every innocent thing. He sneers at the 
mention of purity, and leers in the very face of Virtue, 
as though she were herself corrupt, if the truth were 
kiiown. He assures the credulous disciple that there is 
no purity; that its appearances are only the veils which 
cover indulgence. Nay, he solicits praise for the very 
openness of his evil; and tells the listener that all act as 
lie acts, but only few are courageous enough to own it. 
But the uttermost parts of depravity are laid open only 
when several such monsters meet together, and vie with 



70 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

each other, as we might suppose shapeless mud-monsters 
disport in the slimiest ooze of the ocean. They drive in 
fierce rivalry which shall reach the most infernal depth, 
and bring up the blackest sediment. It makes the blood 
of an honest man run cold, to hear but the echo of the 
shameless rehearsals of their salacious enterprises Each 
strives to tell a blacker tale than the other. AVhen the 
abomination of their actual life is not damnable enough 
to satisfy the ambition of their unutterable corruption, 
they devise, in their imagination, scenes yet more 
flagrant ; swear that they have performed them, and 
when they separate, each strives to make his lying 
boastings true. It would seem as if miscreants so loath- 
some would have no power of temptation upon the young. 
Experience shows that the worst men are, often, the 
most skilful in touching the springs of human action. A 
young man knows little of life ; less of himself. He feels 
in his bosom the various impulses, wild desires, restless 
cravings he can hardly tell for what, a sombre melan- 
choly when all is gay, a violent exhilaration when others 
are sober. These wild gushes of feeling, peculiar to 
youth, the sagacious tempter has felt, has studied, has 
practised upon, until he can sit before that most capacious 
organ, the human mind, knowing every stop, and all the 
combinations, and competent to touch any note through 
the diapason. As a serpent deceived the purest of morals, 
so now a beast may mislead their posterity. He begins 
afar off. He decries the virtue of all men ; studies to 
produce a doubt that any are under self-restraint. He 
unpacks his filthy stories, plays off the fire-works of his 
corrupt imagination — its blue-lights, its red-lights, and 
green-lights, and sparkle-spitting lights ; and edging in 
upon the yielding youth, who begins to wonder at his ex- 
perience, he boasts his first exploits, he hisses at the 
purity of women ; he grows yet bolder, tells more wicked 
deeds, and invents worse even than he ever performed, 
though he has performed worse than good men ever 
thought of. All thoughts, all feelings, all ambition, are 
merged in one and that the lowest, vilest, most detestable 
ambition. 

Had I a son of years, I could, with thanksgiving, see 
him go down to the grave, rather than fall into the maw 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 71 

of this most besotted devil. The plague is mercy, the 
cholera is love, the deadliest fever is refreshment to man's 
body, in comparison with this epitome and essence of 
moral disease. He lives among men, Hell's ambassador 
with full credentials ; nor can we conceive that there 
should be need of any other fiend to perfect the works of 
darkness, while he carries his body among us, stuffed 
with every pestilent drug of corruption. The heart of 
every virtuous young man should loathe him ; if he 
speaks, you should as soon hear a wolf bark. Gather 
around you the venomous snake, the poisonous toad, the 
fetid vulture, the prowling hyena, and their company 
would be an honor to you above his ; for they at least 
remain within their own nature ; but he goes out of his 
nature that he may become more vile than it is possible 
for a mere animal to be. 

He is hateful to religion, hateful to virtue, hateful to 
decency, hateful to the coldest morality. The stenchful 
ichor of his dissolved heart has flowed over every feeling 
of his nature, and left them as the burning lava leaves the 
garden, the orchard, and the vineyard. And it is a 
wonder that the bolt of God which crushed Sodom does 
not slay him. It is a wonder, that the earth does not 
refuse the burden and open and swallow him up. I do 
not fear that the young will be undermined by his direct 
assaults. But some will imitate, and their example will 
be again freely imitated, and finally, a remote circle of 
disciples will spread the diluted contagion among the vir- 
tuous. This man will be the fountain-head, and though 
none will come to drink at a hot spring, yet further down 
along the stream it sends out, will be found many scoop- 
ing from its waters. 

V. I have described the devil in his native form, but 
he sometimes appears as an angel of light. There is a 
polished Libertine, in manners studiously refined, in taste 
faultless ; his face is mild and engaging ; his words drop 
as pure as newly-made honey. In general society, he 
would rather attract regard as a model of purity, and 
suspicion herself could hardly look askance upon him. 
Under this brilliant exterior, his heart is like a sepulchre, 
full of all uncleanness. Contrasted with the gross liber- 
tine, it would not be supposed that he had a thought in 



72 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

common with him. If his heart could be opened to our 
eyes, as it is to God's, we should perceive scarcely dis- 
similar feeling in respect to appetite. Professing un- 
bounded admiration of virtue in general, he leaves not in 
private a point untransgressed. His reading has culled 
every glowing picture of amorous poets, every tempting 
scene of loose dramatists, and looser novelists. Enriched 
by these, his imagination, like a rank soil, is overgrown 
with a prodigal luxuriance of poison-herbs and deadly 
flowers. Men, such as this man is, frequenily aspire to 
be the censors of morality. They are hurt at the injudi- 
cious reprehensions of vice from the pulpit ! They make 
great outcry when plain words are employed to denounce 
base' things. They are astonishingly sensitive and fear- 
ful lest good men should soil their hands with too much 
meddling with evil. Their cries are not the evidence of 
sensibility to virtue, but of too lively a sensibility to vice. 
Sensibility is, often, only the fluttering of an impure 
heart. 

At the very time that their voice is ringing an alarm 
against immoral reformations, they are secretly skeptical 
of every tenet of virtue, and practically unfaithful to 
every one. Of these two libertines, the most refined is 
the most dangerous. The one is a rattlesnake which 
carries its warning with it ; the other, hiding his bur- 
nished scales in the grass, skulks to perform unsuspected 
deeds in darkness. The one is the visible fog and miasm 
of the morass ; the other is the serene air of a tropical 
city, which, though brilliant, is loaded with invisible 
pestilence. 

The Politician. If there be a man on earth whose 
character should be framed of the most sterling honesty, 
and whose conduct should conform to the most scrupu- 
lous morality, it is the man who administers public 
affairs. The most romantic notions of integrity are here 
not extravagant. As, under our institutions, public men 
will be, upon the whole, fair exponents of the character 
of their constituents, the plainest way to secure honest 
public men, is to inspire those who make them, with a 
right understanding of what political character ought to 
be. Young men should be prompted to descriminate be- 
tween the specious, and the real ; the artful, and the 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 73 



honest ; the wise, and the cunning ; the patriotic, and 
the pretender. I will sketch — 

VI. The Demagogue. The lowest of politicians is 
that man who seeks to gratify an invariable selfishness by 
pretending to seek the public good. For a profitable 
popularity he accommodates himself to all opinions, to all 
dispositions, to every side, and to each prejudice. He is 
a mirror, with no face of its own, but a smooth surface 
from which each man of ten thousand may see himself 
reflected. He glides from man to man coinciding with 
their views, pretending their feelings, simulating their 
tastes: with this one, he hates a man ; with that one, he 
loves the same man ; he favors a law, and he dislikes it ; 
he approves, and opposes ; he is on both sides at once, 
and seemingly wishes that he couid be on one side more 
than both sides. He attends meetings to suppress intem- 
perance, — but at elections makes every grog-shop free to 
all drinkers. He can with equal relish plead most elo- 
quently for temperance, or toss off a dozen glasses in a 
dirty grocery. He thinks that there is a time for every- 
thing, and therefore, at one time he swears and jeers and 
leers with a carousing crew ; and at another time, having 
happily been converted, he displays the various features 
of devotion. Indeed, he is a capacious Christian ; an 
epitome of faith. He piously asks the class-leader, of the 
welfare of his charge, for he was always a Methodist and 
always shall be, — until he meets a Presbyterian ; then he 
is a Presbyterian, old-school or new, as the case requires. 
However, as he is not a bigot, he can afford to be a 
Baptist, in a good Baptist neighborhood, and with a wink 
he tells the zealous elder, that he never had one of his 
children baptized, nor he ! He whispers to the Reformer 
that he abhors all creeds but Baptism and the Bible. 
After all this, room will be found in his heart for the 
fugitive sects also, which come and go like clouds in a 
summer sky. His flattering attention at church edifies 
the simple-hearted preacher, who admires that a plain 
sermon should make a man whisper amen ! and weep. 
Upon the stump his tact is no less rare. He roars and 
bawls with courageous plainness, on points about which 
all agree : but. on subjects where men differ, his meaning 
is nicely balanced on a pivot that it may dip either way. 



7l LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

He depends for success chiefly upon humorous stories. A 
glowing patriot a-telling stories is a dangerous antagonist ; 
for it is hard to expose the fallacy of a hearty laugh, and 
men convulsed with merriment are slow to perceive in 
what way an argument is a reply to a story. 

Perseverance, effrontery, good nature, and versatile 
cunning have advanced many a bad man higher than a 
good man could attain. Men will admit that he has not 
a single moral virtue ; but he is smart. We object to no 
man for amusing himself at the fertile resources of the 
politician here painted ; for sober men are sometimes 
pleased with the grimaces and mischievous tricks of a 
versatile monkey ; but would it not be strange indeed if 
they should select him for a ruler, or make him an ex- 
emplar to their sons ? 

VII. I describe next a more respectable and more 
dangerous politician — the Party Man. He has associ- 
ated his ambition, his interests, and his affections with a 
party. He prefers, doubtless, that his side should be vic- 
torious by the best means, and under the championship 
of good men ; but rather than lose the victory, he will 
consent to any means, and follow any man. Thus, with 
a general desire to be upright, the exigency of his party 
constantly pushes him to dishonorable deeds. He op- 
poses fraud by craft ; lie, by lie ; slander, by counter-as- 
persion. To be sure it is wrong to mis-state, to distort, 
to suppress or color facts ; it is wrong to employ the evil 
passions; to set class against class ; the poor against the 
rich, the country against the city, the farmer against the 
mechanic, one section against another section. But his 
opponents do it, and if they will take advantage of men's 
corruption, he must, or lose by his virtue. He gradually 
adopts two characters, a personal and a political character. 
All the requisitions of his conscience he obeys in his pri- 
vate character ; all the requisitions of his party, he obeys 
in his political conduct. In one character he is a man of 
principle ; in the other, a man of mere expedients. As 
a man he means to be veracious, honest, moral; as & poli- 
tician, he is deceitful, cunning, unscrupulous, — anything for 
party. As a man, he abhors the slimy demagogue; as a 
politician, he employs him as a scavenger. As a man, 
he shrinks from the flagitiousncss of slander; as a politi- 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 75 

cian, he permits it, smiles upon it in others, rejoices in 
the success gained by it. As a man, he respects no one 
who is rotten in heart ; as a politician, no man through 
whom victory may be gained can be too bad. As a 
citizen, he is an apostle of temperance ; as a politician, 
he puts his shoulder under the men who deluge their 
track with whisky, marching a crew of brawling patriots, 
pugnaciously drunk, to exercise the freeman's noblest 
franchise, — the vote. As a citizen, he is considerate of 
the young, and counsels them with admirable wisdom ; 
then, as a politician, lie votes for tools, supporting for the 
magistracy worshipful aspirants scraped from the ditch, 
the grog-shop, and the brothel ; thus saying by deeds 
which the young are quick to understand : " I jested, 
when I warned you of bad company ; for you perceive 
none worse than those whom I delight to honor." For 
his religion he will give up all his secular interests ; but 
for his politics he gives up even his religion. He adores 
virtue, and rewards vice. Whilst bolstering up unright- 
eous measures, and more unrighteous men, he prays for 
the advancement of religion, and justice, and honor ! I 
would to God that his prayer might be answered upon his 
own political head; for never N was there a place where 
such blessings were more needed ! I am puzzled to know 
what will happen at death to tin's politic Christian, but 
most unchristian politician. Will both of his characters 
go heavenward together ? If the strongest prevails, he 
will certainly go to hell. If his weakest, (which is his 
Christian character,) is saved, what will become of his 
political character? Shall he be sundered in two, as 
Solomon proposed to divide the contested infant? If 
this style of character were not flagitiously wicked, it 
would still be supremely ridiculous — but it is both. Let 
young men mark these amphibious exemplars to avoid 
their influence. The young have nothing to gain from 
those who are saints in religion and morals, and Machia- 
vels in politics ; who have partitioned off their heart, in- 
vited Christ into one half, and Belial into the other. 

It is wisely said, that a strictly honest man who desires 
purely the public good, who will not criminally flatter the 
people, nor take part in lies, or party-slander, nor descend 
to the arts of the rat, the weasel, and the fox, cannot 



76 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

succeed in politics. It is calmly said by thousands that 
one cannot be a politician and a Christian. Indeed, a 
man is liable to downright ridicule if he speaks in good 
earnest of a scrupulously honest and religiously moral 
politician. I regard all such representations as false. 
We are not without men whose career is a refutation of 
the slander. It poisons the community to teach this fatal 
necessity of corruption in a course which so many must 
pursue. It is not strange, it' such be the popular opinion, 
that young men include the sacrifice of strict integrity as 
a necessary element of a political life, and calmly agree 
to it, as to an inevitable misfortune, rather than to a dark 
and voluntary crime. 

Only if a man is an ignorant heathen, can he escape 
blame for such a decision! A young man, at this day, 
in this land, who can coolly purpose a life of most un- 
manly guile, who means to earn his bread and fame by a 
sacrifice of integrity, is one who requires only temptation 
and opportunity to become a felon. What a heart has 
that man, who can stand in the very middle of the Bible, 
with its transcendent truths raising their glowing fronts 

© Oct 

on every side of him, and feel no inspiration but that of 
immorality and meanness! He knows that for him have 
been founded the perpetual institutions of religion ; for 
him prophets have spoken, miracles been wrought, 
heaven robbed of its Magistrate, and the earth made 
sacred above all planets as the Redeemer's burial-place; 
— he knows it all, and plunges from this height to the 
very bottom of corruption ! He hears that he is im- 
mortal, and despises the immortality ; that he is a son of 
God, and scorns the dignity; an heir of heaven, and 
infamously sells his heirship, and- himself, for a contemp- 
tible mess of loathsome pottage! Do not tell me of any 
excuses. It is a shame to attempt an excuse! If there 
were no religion, if that vast sphere, out of whicli glow 
all the supereminent truths of the Bible, was a mere 
emptiness and void, yet, methinks, the very idea of 
Fatherland, the exceeding preciousness of the Laws and 
Liberties of a great people, would enkindle such a high 
and noble enthusiasm, that all baser feelings would be 
consumed ! But if the love of country, a sense of 
character, a manly regard for integrity, the example of 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 77 

our most illustrious men, the warnings of religion and all 
its solicitations, and the prospect of the future, — dark as 
Perdition to the bad, and light ai> Paradise to the good, — 
cannot inspire a young man to anything higher than a 
sneaking, truckling, dodging scramble for fraudulent 
fame and dishonest bread, it is because such a creature 
has never felt one sensation of manly virtue ; — it is be- 
cause his heart is a howling wilderness, inhospitable to 
innocence. 

Thus have I sketched a tew of the characters which 
abound in every community; dangerous, not more by 
their direct temptations, than by their insensible influence. 
The sight of their deeds, of their temporary success, 
their apparent happiness, relaxes the tense rigidity of a 
scrupulous honesty, inspires a ruinous liberality of senti- 
ment toward vice, and breeds the thoughts of evil ; and 
evil thoughts are the cockatrice's eggs, hatching into 
all bad deeds. 

Remember, if by any of these you are enticed to ruin, 
you will have to bear it alone! They are strong to 
seduce, but heartless to sustain their victims. They will 
exhaust your means, teach you to despise the God of 
your fathers, lead you into every sin, go with you while 
you afford them any pleasure or profit, and then, when 
the inevitable disaster of wickedness begins to overwhelm 
you, they will abandon whom they have debauched. 
When, at -length, death gnaws at your bones and knocks 
at your heart; when staggering, and worn out, your 
courage wasted, your hope gone, your purity, and long, 
long age your peace — -will he who first enticed your steps, 
now serve your extremity with one office of kindness? 
Will he stay your head ? — cheer your dying agony with 
one word of hope? — or light the way for your coward 
steps to the grave ? — or weep when your are gone ? — or 
send one pitiful scrap to your desolate family? What 
reveller wears crape for a dead drunkard? — what gang of 
gamblers ever intermitted a game for the death of a 
companion? — or went on kind missions of relief to 
broken-down fellow-gamblers? What harlot weeps for a 
harlot? — what debau.hee mourns for a debauchee? 
They would carouse at your funeral, and gamble on your 
coffin. If one flush more of pleasure were to be had by 



78 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

if, they would drink .shame and ridicule to your memory 
out of your own skull, and roar in bacchanal-revelry over 
your damnation ! All the shameless atrocities of wicked 
men are nothing to their heartlessness toward each other 
when broken-down. As I have seen worms writhing on 
a carcass, overcrawling each other, and elevating their 
fiery heads in petty ferocity against each other, while all 
were enshrined in the corruption of a common can-ion, — 
I have thought, ah! shameful picture of wicked men 
tempting each other, abetting each other, until calamity 
overtook them, and then fighting and devouring or 
abandoning each other, without pity, or sorrow, or com- 
passion, or remorse. Evil men of every degree will use 
you, flatter you, lead you on until you are useless ; then, 
if the virtuous do not pity you, or God compassionate, 
you are without a friend in the universe. 

My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. If they 
say, Come with us, . . . we shall find all precious 
substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil: cast in thy 
lot among us ; let us all have one purse : my son, walk not 
thou in the way with them ; refrain thy feet from their 
path : for their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed 
blood, . . . and they lay in wait for their own blood, 
they lurk privily for their own lives. 



LECTURE V. 



Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments 
and made four parts, to every soldier a part, and also his coat. Now 
the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said 
therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, 
whose it shall be. These things therefore the soldiers did. 

I have condensed into one account the separate parts 
of this gambling transaction as narrated by each evangel- 
ist. How marked in every age is a gambler's character ! 
The enraged priesthood of ferocious sects taunted Christ's 
dying agonies ; the bewildered multitude, accustomed to 
cruelty, could shout ; but no earthly creature, but a Gam- 
bler, could be so lost to all feeling as to sit down coolly 
under a dying man to wrangle for his garments, and arbi- 
trate their avaricious differences by casting dice for his 
tunic, with hands spotted with iiis spattered blood, warm 
and yet undried upon them. The descendants of these 
patriarchs of gambling, however, have taught us that 
there is nothing possible to hell, uncongenial to these, its 
elect saints. In this lecture it is my disagreeable task to 
lead your steps down the dark path to their cruel haunts, 
there to exhibit their infernal passions, their awful ruin, 
and their ghastly memorials. In this house of darkness, 
amid fierce faces gleaming with the fire of fiercer hearts, 
amid oaths and groans and fiendish orgies, ending in mur- 
ders and strewn with swelteriug corpses, — do not mistake, 
and suppose yourself in Hell, — you are only in its pre- 
cincts and vestibule. 



Gambling is the staking or winning of property upon 
mere hazard. The husbandman renders produce for his 
gains ; the mechanic renders the product of labor and 

(79) 



80 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

skill for his gains ; the gambler renders for his gain the 
sleights of useless skill, or more often, downright cheat- 
ing. Betting is gambling; there is no honest equivalent 
to its gains. Dealings in fancy-stocks are oftentimes 
sheer gambling, with all its worst evils. Profits so earned 
are np better than the profits of dice, cards, or hazard. 
When skill returns for its earnings a useful service, as 
knowledge, beneficial amusements, or profitable labor, it 
is honest commerce. The skill of a pilot in threading a 
narrow channel, the skill of a lawyer in threading a still 
more intricate one, are as substantial equivalents for a 
price received, as if they were merchant goods or agri- 
cultural products. But all gains of mere skill which re- 
sult in no real benefit, are gambling gains. 

Gaming, as it springs from a principle of our nature, 
has, in some form, probably existed in every age. We 
trace it in remote periods and among the most barbarous 
j eople. It loses none of its fascinations among a civilized 
people. On the contrary, the habit of fierce stimulants, 
the jaded appetite of luxury, and the satiety of wealth, 
seem to invite the master-excitant. Our land, not apt to 
be behind in good or evil, is full of gambling in all its 
forms — the gambling of commerce, the gambling of bets 
and wagers, and the gambling of games of hazard. There 
is gambling in refined circles, and in the lowest; among 
the members of our national government, and of our 
state-governments. Thief gambles with thief, in jail ; 
the judge who sent them there, the lawyer who prosecuted, 
and the lawyer who defended them, often gamble too. 
This vice, once almost universally prevalent among the 
Western bar, and still too frequently disgracing its mem- 
bers, is, however, we are happy to believe, decreasing. 
In many circuits, not long ago, and in some now, the 
judge, the jury, and the bar, shuffled cards by night, and 
law by day — dealing out money and justice alike. The 
clatter of dice and cards disturbs your slumber on the 
boat, and rings drowsily from the upper rooms of the 
hotel. This vice pervades the city, extends over every 
line of travel, and infests the most moral districts. The 
secreted lamp dimly lights the apprentices to their game ; 
with unsuspected disobedience, boys creep out of their 
beds to it ; it goes on in the store close by the till ; it 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 81 

haunts the shop. The scoundrel in his lair, the scholar 
in his room ; the pirate on his ship, gay women at par- 
ties ; loafers in the street-corner, public functionaries in 
their offices ; the beggar under the hedge, the rascal in 
prison, and some professors of religion in the somnolent 
hours of the Sabbath, — waste their energies by the ruin- 
ous excitement of the game. Besides these players, there 
are troops of professional gamblers, troops of hangers-on, 
troops of youth to be drawn in. An inexperienced eye 
would detect in our peaceful towns no signs of this vul- 
ture-flock; — so in a sunny day, when all cheerful birds 
are singing merrily, not a buzzard can be seen ; but let a 
carcass drop, and they will push forth their gaunt heads 
from their gloomy roosts, and come flapping from the 
dark woods to speck the air, and dot the ground with their 
numbers. 

The universal prevalence of this vice is a reason for 
parental vigilance ; and a reason of remonstrance from 
the citizen, the parent, the minister of the gospel, the 
patriot, and the press. I propose to trace its opening, de- 
scribe its subjects, and detail its effects. 

A young man, proud of freedom, anxious to exert his 
manhood, has tumbled his Bible, and sober books, and 
letters of counsel, into a dark closet. He has learned 
various accomplishments, to flirt, to boast, to swear, to 
fight, to drink. He has let every one of these chains be 
put around him, upon the solemn promise of Satan that 
he would take them off whenever he wished. Hearing 
of the artistic feats of eminent gamblers, he emulates 
them. So, he ponders the game. He teaches what he 
has learned to his shopmates, and feels himself their 
master. As yet he has never played for stakes. It begins 
thus : Peeping into a book-store, he watches till the sober 
customers go out ; then slips in, and with assumed bold- 
ness, not concealing his shame, he asks for cards, buys 
them, and hastens out. The first game is to pay for the 
cards. After the relish of playing for a stake, no game 
can satisfy them without a stake. A few nuts are staked ; 
then a bottle of wine ; an oyster-supper. At last they 
can venture a sixpence in actual money — just for the 
amusement of it. I need go no further — whoever wishes 
to do anything with the lad, can do it now. If properly 
G 



82 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

plied, and gradually led, he will go to any length, and stop 
only at the gallows. Do you doubt it? let us trace him 
a year or two further on. 

With his father's blessing, and his mother's tears, the 
young man departs from home. He has received his 
patrimony, and embarks for life and independence. Upon 
his journey he rests at a city; visits the " school of 
morals ; " lingers in more suspicious places ; is seen by a 
sharper ; and makes his acquaintance. The knave sits 
by him at dinner; gives him the news of the place, and 
a world of advice ; cautions him against sharpers ; inquires 
if he has money, and charges him to keep it secret ; offers 
himself to make with him the rounds of the town, and 
secure him from imposition. At length, that he may see 
all, he is taken to a gaming-house, but, with apparent 
kindness, warned not to play. He stands by to see the 
various fortunes of the game ; some, forever losing; some, 
touch what number they will, gaining piles of gold. Look- 
ing in thirst where wine is free. A glass is taken ; 
another of a better kind; next the best the landlord has, 
and two glasses of that. A change comes over the youth ; 
his exhilaration raises his courage, and lulls his caution. 
Gambling seen, seems a different thing from gambling 
painted by a pious father ! Just then his friend remarks 
t hat one might easily double his money by a few ventures, but 
that it was, perhaps, prudent not to risk. Only this was 
needed to fire his mind. What ! only prudence between 
me and gain ? Then that shall not be long ! He stakes ; 
he wins. Stakes again ; wins again. Glorious ! I am 
the lucky man that is to break the bank ! He stakes, and 
wins again. His pulse races ; his face burns ; his blood is 
up, and fear gone. He loses ; loses again ; loses all his 
winnings; loses more. But fortune turns again ; he wins 
anew. He has now lost all self-command. Gains excite 
him, and losses excite him more. He doubles his stakes ; 
then trebles them — and all is swept. He rushes on, puts 
up his whole purse, and loses the whole ! Then he would 
borrow ; no man will lend. He is desperate, he will fight 
at a word. He is led to the street, and thrust out. The 
cool breeze which blows upon his fevered cheek, wafts the 
slow and solemn stroke of the clock, — one, — two, — three, 
— four ; four of the morning! C^uick work ot ruin -' — an 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 83 

innocent man destroyed in a night ! He staggers to his 
hotel, remembers as he enters it, that he has not even 
enough to pay his bill. It now flashes upon him that li is 
friend, who never had left him for an hour before, had 
stayed behind where his money is, and, doubtless, is 
laughing over his spoils. His blood boils with rage. But 
at length comes up the remembrance of home ; a parent's 
training and counsels for more than twenty years, destroyed 
in a night ! " Good God ! what a wretch I have been ! 
I am not fit to live. I cannot go home. I am a stranger 
herec Oh ! that I were dead ! Oh ! that I had died be- 
fore I knew this guilt, and were lying where my sister 
lies! Oh God! Oh God! my head will burst with 
agony ! " He stalks his lonely room with an agony which 
only the young heart knows in its first horrible awaken- 
ing to remorse — when it looks despair full in the face, and 
feels its hideous incantations tempting him to suicide. 
Subdued at length by agony, cowed and weakened by 
distress, he is sought again by those who plucked him. 
Cunning to subvert inexperience, to raise the evil pas- 
sions, and to allay the good, they make him their pliant 
tool. 

Farewell, young man ! I see thy steps turned to that 
haunt again ! I see hope lighting thy face ; but it is a 
lurid light, and never came from heaven. Stop before 
that threshold! — turn, and bid farewell to home ! — fare- 
well to innocence ! — farewell to venerable father and aged 
mother ! — the next step shall part thee from them all for- 
ever. And now henceforth be a mate to thieves, a 
brother to corruption. Thou hast made a league with 
death, and unto death shalt thou go. 

Let us here pause, to draw the likeness of a few who 
stand conspicuous in that vulgar crowd of gamblers, with 
which hereafter he will consort. The first is a taciturn, 
quiet man. No one knows when he comes into town, or 
when he leaves. No man hears of his gaining ; for he 
never boasts, nor reports his luck. He spends little for 
parade ; his money seems to go and come only through 
the game. He reads none, converses none, is neither a 
glutton nor a hard drinker; he sports few ornaments, and 
wears plain clothing. Upon the whole, he seems a gen- 
tlemanly man ; and sober citizens say, "his only fault is 



84 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

gambling." What then is this " only fault ?" In his 
heart he has the most intense and consuming lust of play. 
He is quiet because every passion is absorbed in one ; 
and that one burning at the highest name. He thinks of 
nothing else, cares only for this. All other things, even 
the hottest lusts of other men, are too cool to be tempta- 
tions to him ; so much deeper is the style of his passions. 
He will sit upon his chair, and no man shall see him 
move for hours, except to play his cards. He sees none 
come in, none go out. Death might groan on one side 
of the room, and marriage might sport on the other, — he 
would know neither. Every created influence is shut 
out ; one thing only moves him — the game ; and that 
leaves not one pulse of excitability unaroused, but stirs 
his soul to the very dregs. 

Very different is the roistering gamester. He bears a 
jolly face, a glistening eye something watery through 
watching and drink. His fingers are manacled in rings ; 
his bosom glows with pearls and diamonds. He learns 
the time which he wastes from a watch full gorgeously 
carved, (and not with the most modest scenes.) and slung 
around his neck by a ponderous golden chain. There is 
not so splendid a fellow to be seen sweeping through the 
streets. The landlord makes him welcome — he will bear 
a full bill. The tailor smiles like May — he will buy 
half his shop. Other places bid him welcome — he will 
bear large stealings. 

Like the Judge, he makes his circuit, but not for jus- 
tice ; like the Preacher, he has his appointments, but not 
for instruction. His circuits are the race-courses, the 
crowded capital, days of general convocation, conventions, 
and mass-gatherings. He will flame on the race-track, 
bet his thousands, and beat the ring at swearing, oaths 
vernacular, imported, simple, or compound. The drink- 
ing-booth smokes when he draws in his welcome suit. 
Did you see him only by day, flaming in apparel, jovial 
and free-hearted at the Restaurateur or Hotel, you would 
think him a Prince let loose — a cross between Prince Hal 
and Falstaff. 

11. if !;;_-;•;* ic hi s t lay. These are mere exercises, and 
unei prefaces to Ins rt-^I accomplishments. He is a good 
fellow, who dares play deeper; L. : ° wild indeed, who 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 85 

seems wilder ; and lie is keen indeed, wlio is sharper 
than he is, after all this show of frankness. No one is 
quicker, slyer, and more alert at a game. He can shuffle 
the pack till an honest man would as soon think of look- 
ing for a particular drop of water in the ocean, as for a 
particular card in any particular place. Perhaps he is 
ignorant which is at the top and which at the bottom! 
At any rate, watch him closely, or you will get a lean 
hand and he a fat one. A plain man would think him a 
wizard or the devil. When he touches a pack they seem 
alive, and acting to his will rather than his touch. He 
deals them like lightning, they rain like snow-flakes, 
sometimes one, sometimes two, if need be four or five to- 
gether, and his hand hardly moved. If he loses, very 
well, he laughs ; if he gains, he only laughs a little more. 
Full of stories, full of songs, full of wit, full of roistering 
spirit — yet do not trespass too much upon his good na- 
ture with insult ! All this outside is only the spotted 
hide which covers the tiger. He who provokes this man, 
shall see what lightning can break out of a summer-seem- 
ing cloud ! 

These do not fairly represent the race of gamblers, — 
conveying too favorable an impression. There is one, 
often met on Steam-boats, travelling solely to gamble. 
He has the servants, or steward, or some partner, in 
league with him, to fleece every unwary player whom he 
inveigles to a game. He deals falsely ; heats his dupe to 
madness by drink, drinking none himself; watches the 
signal of his accomplice telegraphing his opponent's 
hand ; at a stray look, he will slip your money off and 
steal it. To cover false playing, or to get rid of paying 
losses, he will lie fiercely, and swear uproariously, and 
break up the play to fight with knife or pistol — first scrap- 
ing the table of every penny. When the passengers are 
asleep, he surveys the luggage, to see what maybe worth 
stealing ; he pulls a watch from under the pillow of one 
sleeper; fumbles in the pockets of another; and gathers 
booty throughout the cabin. Leaving the boat before 
morning, he appears at some village hotel, a magnificent 
gentleman, a polished traveller, or even a distinguished 
nobleman ! 

There is another gambler, cowardly, sleek, stealthy, 



8G LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

humble, mousing, and mean — a simple blood-sucker. 

For money, he "will be a tool to other gamblers ; steal for 
them, and from them ; he plays the* jackal, and searches 
vietims for them, humbly satisfied to pick the bones after- 
ward. Thus, (to employ his own language,) lie ropes in 
the inexperienced young, flatters them, teaches them, in- 
flames their passions, purveys to their appetites, cheats 
them, debauches them, draws them down to his own level, 
and then lords it over them in malignant meanness. 
Himself impure, he plunges others into lasciviousness ; 
and with a train of reeking satellites, he revolves a few 
years in the orbit of the game, the brothel, and the doc- 
tor's shop ; then sinks and dies : the world is purer, and 
good men thank God that he is gone. 

Besides these, time would fail me to describe the inef- 
fable dignity of a gambling judge ; the cautious, phleg- 
matic lawyer, gambling from sheer avarice ; the broken- 
down and cast-away politician, seeking in the game the 
needed excitement, and a fair field for all the base tricks 
he once played off as a patriot ; the pert, sharp, keen, 
jockey-gambler ; the soaked, obese, plethoric, wheezing, 
bacchanal ; and a crowd of ignoble worthies, wearing all 
the badges and titles of vice, throughout its base peerage. 

A detail of the evils of gambling should be preceded by 
an illustration of that constitution of mind out of which 
they t mainly spring — I mean its excitability. The 
body is not stored with a fixed amount of strength, nor 
the mind with a uniform measure of excitement; tut 
both are capable, by stimulation, of expansion of strength 
or feeling, almost without limit. Experience shows, that 
within certain bounds, excitement is healthful and neces- 
sary, but beyond this limit, exhausting and destructive. 
Men are allowed to choose between moderate but long- 
continued excitement, and intense but short-lived excite- 
ment. Too generally they prefer the latter. To gain 
this intense thrill, a thousand methods are tried. The 
inebriate obtains it by drink and druzs ; the politician, by 
the keen interest of the civil campaign ; the young by 
amusements which violently inflame and gratify their ap- 
petites. When once this higher flavor of stimulus has 
been tasted, nil that is less becomes vapid and disgustful. 
A sailor tries to live on shore ; a few weeks suffice. To 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 87 

be sure, there is no hardship, or. cold, or suffering; but 
neither is there the strong excitement of the ocean, the 
gale, the storm, and the world of strange sights. The 
politician perceives that his private affairs are deranged, 
his family neglected, his character aspersed, his feelings 
exacerbated. When men hear him confess that his ca- 
reer is a hideous waking dream, the race vexatious, and 
the end vanity, they wonder that he clings to it ; but he 
knows that nothing but the fiery wine which he has 
tasted will rouse up that intense excitement, now become 
necessary to his happiness. For this reason, great men 
often cling to public office with all its envy, jealousy, care, 
toil, hates, competitions, and unrequited fidelity; for 
these very disgusts, and the perpetual struggle, strike a 
deeper chord of excitement than is possible to the gentler 
touches of home, friendship and love. Here too is the 
key to the real evil of promiscuous novel-reading, to the 
habit of reverie and mental romancing. None of life's 
common duties can excite to such wild pleasure as these ; 
and they must be continued, or the mind reacts into the 
lethargy of fatigue and ennui. It is upon this principle 
that men love pain ; suffering is painful to a spectator ; 
but in tragedies, at public executions, at pugilistic com- 
bats, at cock-fightings, horse-races, bear-baitings, bull- 
fights, gladiatorial shows, it excites a jaded mind as noth- 
ing else can. A tyrant torments for the same reason 
that a girl reads her tear-bedewed romance, or an inebri- 
ate drinks his dram. No longer susceptible even to in- 
ordinate stimuli, actual moans, and shrieks, and the 
writhing of utter agony, just suffice to excite his worn-out 
sense, and inspire, probably, less emotion than ordinary 
men have in listening to a tragedy or reading a bloody 
novel. 

Gambling is founded upon the very worst perversion 
of this powerful element of our nature. It heats every 
part of the mind like an oven. The faculties which pro- 
duce calculation, pride of skill, of superiority, love of 
gain, hope, fear, jealousy, hatred, are absorbed in the 
game, and exhilarated, or exacerbated by victory or de- 
feat. These passions are, doubtless, excited in men by 
the daily occurrences of life ; but then they are transient, 
and counteracted by a thousand grades of emotion, which 



88 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

rise and fall like the undulations of the sea. But in 
gambling there is no intermission, no counteraction. The 
whole mind is excited to the utmost, and concentrated at 
its extreme point of excitation for hours and days, with 
the additional waste of sleepless nights, profuse drinking, 
and other congenial immoralities. Every other pursuit 
becomes tasteless ; for no ordinary duty has in it a stimu- 
lus which can scorch a mind which now refuses to burn 
without blazing, or to feel an interest which is not in- 
toxication. The victim of excitement is like a mariner 
who ventures into the edge of a whirlpool for a motion 
more exhilarating than plain sailing. He is unalarmed 
during the first few gyrations, for escape is easy. But 
each turn sweeps him further in ; the power augments, 
the speed becomes terrific as he rushes toward the vor- 
tex ; all escape now hopeless. A noble ship went in ; it 
is split out in broken fragments, splintered spars, crushed 
masts, and cast up for many a rood along the shore. The 
specific evils of gambling may now be almost imagined. 

I. It diseases the mind, unfitting it for the duties of 
life. Gamblers are seldom industrious men in any useful 
vocation. A gambling mechanic finds his labor less 
relishful as his passion for play increases. He grows un- 
steady, neglects his work, becomes unfaithful to promises; 
what he performs he slights. Little jobs seem little 
enough ; he desires immense contracts, whose uncertainty 
has much the excitement of gambling — and for the best 
of reasons ; and in the pursuit of great and sudden 
profits, by wild schemes, he stumbles over into ruin, 
leaving all who employed or trusted him in the rubbish 
of his speculations. 

A gambling lawyer, neglecting the drudgery of his pro- 
fession, will court its exciting duties. To explore 
authorities, compare reasons, digest, and write, — this is 
tiresome. But to advocate, to engage in fiery contests 
with keen opponents, this is nearly as good as gambling. 
Many a ruined client has cursed the law, and cursed a 
stupid jury, and cursed everybody for his irretrievable 
loss, except his lawyer, who gambled all night when he 
should have prepared the case, and came half asleep and 
debauched into court in the morning to lose a good <>ase 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 89 

mismanaged, and snatched from his gambling hands by 
the art of sober opponents. 

A gambling student, if such a thing can be, withdraws 
from thoughtful authors to the brilliant and spicy ; from 
the pure among these, to the sharp and ribald ; from all 
reading about depraved life, to seeing ; from sight to 
experience. Gambling vitiates the imagination, corrupts 
the tastes, destroys the industry — for no man will drudge 
for cents, who gambles for dollars by the hundred ; or 
practise a piddling economy, while, with almost equal 
indifference, he makes or loses five hundred in a night. 

II. For a like reason, it destroys all domestic habits 
and affections. Home is a prison to an inveterate gam- 
bler; there is no air there that he can breathe. For a 
moment he may sport with his children, and smile upon 
his wife; but his heart, its strong passions, are not there. 
A little branch-rill may flow through the family, but the 
deep river of his affections flows away from home. On 
the issue of a game, Tacitus narrates that the ancient 
Germans would stake their property, their wives, their 
children, and themselves. What less than this is it, 
when a man will stake that property which is to give his 
family bread, and that honor which gives them place and 
rank in society ? 

When playing becomes desperate gambling, the heart 
is a hearth where all the fires of gentle feelings have 
smouldered to ashes ; and a thorough-paced gamester 
could rattle dice in a charnel-house, and wrangle for his 
stakes amid murder, and pocket gold dripping with the 
blood of his own kindred. 

III. Gambling is the parent and companion of every 
vice which pollutes the heart, or injures society. 

It is a practice so disallowed among Christians, and so 
excluded by mere moralists, and so hateful to industrious 
and thriving men, that those who practise it are shut up 
to themselves ; unlike lawful pursuits, it is not modified 
or restrained by collision with others. Gamblers herd 
with gamblers. They tempt and provoke each other to 
all evil, without affording one restraint, and without pro- 
viding the counterbalance of a single virtuous impulse. 
They are like snakes coiling among snakes, poison and 
poisoning; like plague-patients, infected and diffusing in- 



90 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

fection; each sick, and all contagious. It is impossible 

to put bad men together and not have them grow worse. 
The herding of convicts promiscuously, produced such a 
fermentation of depravity, that, long ago, legislators for- 
bade it. "When criminals, out of jail, herd together by 
choice, the same corrupt nature will doom them to grow- 
ing loathsomeness, because to increasing wickedness. 

IV. It is a provocative of thirst. The bottle is almost 
as needful as the card, the ball, or the dice. Some are 
seduced to drink ; some drink for imitation, at first, and 
fashion. When super-excitements, at intervals, subside, 
their victim cannot bear the deathlike gloom of the reac- 
tion ; and, by drugs or liquor, wind up their system to 
the glowing point again. Therefore, drinking is the in- 
variable concomitant of the theatre, circus, race-course, 
gaming-table, and of all amusements which powerfully 
excite all but the moral feelings. When the double fires 
of dice and brandy blaze under a man, he will soon be 
consumed. If men are found who do not drink, they are 
the more noticeable because exceptions. 

V. It is, even in its fairest form, the almost inevitable 
cause of dishonesty. Robbers have robbers' honor ; 
thieves have thieves' law ; and pirates conform to pirates' 
regulations. But where is there a gambler's code ? One 
law there is, and this not universal, pay your gambling 
debts. But on the wide question, how is it fair to win — 
what law is there ? What will shut a man out from a 
gambler's club ? May he not discover his opponent's 
hand by fraud ? May not a concealed thread, pulling the 
significant one ; — one, two ; or one, two, three ; or the 
sign of a bribed servant or waiter, inform him. and yet 
his standing be fair? May he not cheat in shuffling, and 
yet be in full orders and canonical ? May he not cheat 
in dealing, and vet be a welcome gambler? — may he not 
steal the money from your pile by laying his hands upon 
it, just as any other thief would, and yet be an approved 
gambler? May not the whole code be stated thus: Pay 
what you lose, get what you can, and in any way you can! 
I am told, perhaps, that there are honest gamblers, gen- 
tlemanly gamblers. Certainly; there are always ripe 
apples before there are rotten. Men always begin before 
they end; there is always an approximation before there 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 91 

is contact. Players will play truly (ill tl.ey get used to 
playing untruly ; will be honest, till they cheat ; will be 
honorable, till they become base ; and when you have 
said all this, what does it amount to but this, that men 
who really gamble, really cheat ; and that they only do 
not cheat, who are not yet real gamblers ? If this mends 
the matter, let it be so amended. I have spoken of 
gamesters only among themselves ; this is the least part 
of the evil ; for who is concerned when lions destroy 
bears, or w r olves devour wolf-cubs, or snakes sting vipers? 
In respect to that department of gambling which includes 
the roping-in of strangers, young men, collecting-clerks, 
and unsuspecting green-hands, and robbing them, I have 
no language strong enough to mark down its turpitude, 
its infernal rapacity. After hearing many of the scenes 
not unfamiliar to every gambler, I think Satan might be 
proud of their dealings, and look up to them with that 
deferential respect, with which one monster gazes upon a 
superior. There is not even the expectation of honesty. 
Some scullion-herald of iniquity decoys the unwary 
wretch into the secret room ; he is tempted to drink ; 
made confident by the specious simplicity of the game ; 
allowed to win ; and every bait and lure and blind is 
employed — then he is plucked to the skin by tricks which 
appear as fair as honesty itself. The robber avows his 
deed, does it openly ; the gambler sneaks to the same 
result under skulking pretences. There is a frank way, 
and a mean way of doing a wicked thing. The gambler 
takes the meanest way of doing the dirtiest deed. The 
victim's own partner is sucking his blood ; it is a league 
of sharpers, to get his money at any rate ; and the wick- 
edness is so unblushing and unmitigated, that it gives, at 
last, an instance of what the deceitful human heart, 
knavish as it is, is ashamed to try to cover or conceal ; 
but confesses with helpless honesty, that it is fraud, 
cheating, stealing, robbery, — and nothing else. 

If I walk the dark street, and a perishing, hungry 
wretch meets me and bears off my purse with but a single 
dollar, the whole town awakes ; the officers are alert, the 
myrmidons of the law scout, and hunt, and bring in the 
trembling culprit to stow him in the. jail. But a worse 
thief may meet me, decoy my steps, and by a greater 



92 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

dishonesty, filch ten thousand dollars, — and what then ? 
The story spreads, the sharpers move abroad unharmed, 
no one stirs. It is the day's conversation ; and like a 
sound it rolls to the distance, and dies in an echo. 

Shall such astounding iniquities be vomited out amidst 
us, and no man care ? Do we love our children, and yet 
let them walk in a den of vipers ? Shall we pretend to 
virtue, and purity, and religion, and yet make partners 
of our social life, men whose heart has conceived such 
damnable deeds, and whose hands have performed them ? 
Shall there be even in the eye of religion no difference 
between the corruptor of youth and their guardian ? 
Are all the lines and marks of morality so effaced, is the 
nerve and courage of virtue so quailed by the frequency 
and boldness and flagitious crimes, that men, covered 
over with wickedness, shall find their iniquity no obstacle 
to their advancement among a Christian people ? 

In almost every form of iniquity there is some shade 
or trace of good. We have in gambling a crime standing 
alone — dark, malignant, uncompounded wickedness ! It 
seems in its full growth a monster without a tender 
mercy, devouring its own offspring without one feeling 
but appetite. A gamester, as such, is the cool, calculat- 
ing, essential spirit of concentrated avaricious selfishness. 
His intellect is a living thing, quickened with double life 
for villany ; his heart is steel of fourfold temper. When 
a man begins to gamble he is as a noble tree full of sap, 
green with leaves, a shade to beasts, and a covert to birds. 
When one becomes a thorough gambler, he is like that 
tree lightning-smitten, rotten in root, dry in branch, and 
sapless ; seasoned hard and tough ; nothing lives beneath 
it, nothing on its branches, unless a hawk or a vulture 
perches for a moment to whet its beak, and fly screaming 
away for its prey. 

To every young man who indulges in the least form of 
gambling, I raise a warning voice! Under the specious 
name of amusement, you are laying the foundation of 
gambling. Playing is the seed which comes up gambling. 
It is the light wind Which brings up the storm. It is the 
white frost which preludes the winter. You are mis- 
taken, however, in supposing that it is harmless in its 
earliest beginnings. Its terrible blight belongs, doubt- 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 93 

less, to a later stage ; but its consumption of time, its de- 
struction of industry, its distaste for the calmer pleasures 
of life, belong to the very beginning. You will begin to 
play with every generous feeling. Amusement will be 
the plea. At the beginning the game will excite enthusi- 
asm, pride of skill, the love of mastery, and the love of 
money. The love of money, at first almost impercepti- 
ble, at last will rule out all the rest, — like Aaron's rod, — 
a serpent, swallowing every other serpent. Generosity - 
enthusiasm, pride and skill, love of mastery, will be ab- 
sorbed in one mighty feeling, — the savage lust of lucre. 

There is a downward climax in this sin. The opening 
and ending are fatally connected, and drawn toward each 
other with almost irresistible attraction. If gambling is 
a vortex, playing is the outer ring of the Maelstrom. 
The thousand pound stake, the whole estate put up on a 
game — what are these but the instruments of kindling 
that tremendous excitement which a diseased heart 
craves ? What is the amusement for which you play but 
the excitement of the game ? And for what but this does 
the jaded gambler play? You differ from him only in the 
degree of the same feeling. Do not solace yourself that 
you shall escape because others have ; for they stopped, 
and you go on. Are you as safe as they, when you are in 
the gulf-stream of perdition, and they on the shore? But 
have you ever asked, how many have escaped? Not one 
in a thousand is left unblighted ! You have nine hun- 
dred and ninety-nine chances against you, and one for 
you ; and will you go on ? If a disease should stalk 
through the town, devouring whole families, and sparing 
not one in five hundred, would you lie down under it 
quietly because you had one chance in five hundred ? 
Had a scorpion stung you, would it alleviate your pangs 
to reflect that you had only one chance in one hundred? 
Had you swallowed corrosive poison, would it ease your 
convulsions to think there was only one chance in fifty 
for you ? I do not call every man who plays a gambler, 
but a gambler in embryo. Let me trace your course 
from the amusement of innocent playing to its almost 
inevitable end. 

Scene first. A genteel coffee-house, — whose humane 
screen conceals a line of grenadier bottles, and hides re- 



94 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

spectable blushes from impertinent eyes. There is a 
quiet little room opening out of the bar ; and here sit 
four jovial youths. The cards are out, the wines are in. 
The fourth is a reluctant hand ; he does not love the 
drink, nor approve the game. He anticipates and fears 
the result of both. Why is he here? He is a whole- 
souled fellow, and is afraid to seem ashamed of any fash- 
ionable gaiety. He will sip his wine upon the importu- 
nity of a friend newly come to town, and is too polite to 
spoil that friend's pleasure by refusing a part in the game. 
They sit, shuffle, deal ; the night wears on, the clock tell- 
ing no tale of passing hours — the prudent liquor-fiend has 
made it safely dumb. The night is getting old ; its dank 
air grows fresher; the east is grey; the gaming and 
drinking and hilarious laughter are over, and the youths 
wending homeward. "What says conscience ? No matter 
what it says ; they did not hear, and we will not. What- 
ever was said, it was very shortly answered thus : " This 
has not been gambling ; all were gentlemen ; there was 
no cheating; simply a convivial evening; no stakes ex- 
cept the bills incident to the entertainment. If anybody 
blames a young man for a little innocent exhilaration on 
a special occasion, he is a superstitious bigot ; let him 
croak! " Such a garnished game is made the text to jus- 
tify the whole round of gamhling. Let us, then, look at 

Scene the second. In a room so silent that there is no 
sound except the shrill cock crowing the morning, where 
the forgotten candles burn dimly over the long and 
lengthened wick, sit four men. Carved marble could 
not be more motionless, save their hands. Pale, watch- 
ful, though weary, their eyes pierce the cards, or furtively 
read each other's faces. Hours have passed over them 
thus. At length they rise without words ; some, with a 
satisfaction which only makes their faces brightly hag- 
gard, scrape off the piles of money ; others, dark, sullen, 
silent, fierce, move away from their lost money. The 
darkest and fiercest of the four is that young friend who 
first sat down to make out a game ! He will never sit so 
innocently again. What says he to his conscience now? 
" I have a right to gamble; I have a right to be damned 
too. if I choose; whose business is it?" 

Scene the third. Years have passed on. lie has seen 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 95 

youth ruined, at first with expostulation, then with only 
silent regret, then consenting to take part of the spoils ; 
and finally, he has himself decoyed, duped, and stripped 
them without mercy. Go with me into that dilapidated 
house, not far from the landing, at New Orleans. Look 
into that dirty room. Around a broken table, sitting 
upon boxes, kegs, or rickety chairs, see a filthy crew 
dealing cards smouched with tobacco, grease and liquoi:. 
One has a pirate-face burnished and burnt with brandy ; a 
shock of grizzly, matted hair, half covering his villain 
eyes, which glare out like a wild beast's from a thicket. 
Close by him wheezes a white-faced, dropsical wretch, 
vermin-covered, and stenchful. A scoundrel-Spaniard, 
and a burly negro, (the jolliest of the four,) complete 
the group. They have spectators — drunken sailors, and 
ogling, thieving, drinking women, who should have died 
long ago, when all that was womanly died. Here hour 
draws on hour, sometimes with brutal laughter, some- 
times with threat, and oath, and uproar. The last few 
stolen dollars lost, and temper too, each charges each 
with cheating, and high words ensue, and blows ; and the 
whole gang burst out the door, beating, biting, scratching, 
and rolling over and over in the dirt and dust. The 
worst, the fiercest, the drunkest, of the four, is our friend 
who began by making up the game? 

Scene the fourth. Upon this bright day, stand with me, 
if you would be sick of humanity, and look over that 
multitude of men kindly gathered to see a murderer 
hung! At last, a guarded cart drags on a thrice-guarded 
wretch. At the gallows' ladder his courage fails. His 
coward-feet refuse to ascend ; dragged up, he is supported 
by bustling officials ; his brain reels, his eyes swim, while 
the meek minister utters a final prayer by his leaden ear. 
The prayer is said, the noose* is fixed, the signal is given ; 
a shudder runs through the crowd as he swings free. 
After a moment, his convulsed limbs stretch down, and 
hang heavily and still ; and he who began to gamble to 
make up a game, and ended with stabbing an enraged 
victim whom he had fleeced, has here played his last game, 
— himself the stake ! 

I feel impelled, in closing, to call the attention of all 



96 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

sober citizens to some potent influences which are exerted 
in favor of gambling. 

In our civil economy we have Legislators to devise and 
enact wholesome laws ; Lawyers to counsel and aid those 
who need the laws' relief; and Judges to determine and 
administer the laws. If Legislators, Lawyers, and 
Judges are gamblers, with what hope do warn off the 
young from this deadly fascination, against such authori- 
tative examples of high public functionaries? With 
what eminent fitness does that Judge press the 
bench, who in private commits the vices which officially 
he is set to condemn ! With what singular terrors does 
he frown on a convicted gambler with whom he played 
last night, and will play again to-night! How wisely 
should the fine be light which the sprightly criminal will 
win and pay out of the Judge's own pocket ! 

With the name of Judge is associated ideas of im- 
maculate purity, sober piety, and fearless, favorless jus- 
tice. Let it then be counted a dark crime for a recreant 
official so far to forget his reverend place, and noble 
office, as to run the gantlet of filthy vices, and make the 
word Judge, to suggest an incontinent trifler, who smites 
with his mouth, and smirks with his eye; who holds the 
rod to strike the criminal, and smites only the law to 
make a gap for criminals to pass through ! If God loves 
this land, may he save it from truckling, drinking, swear- 
ing, gambling, vicious Judges!* 

"With such Judges I must associate corrupt Legis- 
lators, whose bawling patriotism leaks out in all the 
sinks of infamy at the Capital. These living exemplers 
of vice, pass still-born laws against vice. Are such men 
sent to the Capital only to practice debauchery? Labor- 
ious seedsmen — they gather every germ of evil ; and 
laborious sowers — at home they strew them far and wide! 
It is a burning shame, a high outrage, that public men, 
by corrupting the young with the example of manifold 
vices, should pay back their constituents for their 
honors ! 

* The general eminent integrity of the Bench is unquestionable — 
and no remarks in the text are t<> be construed as an oblique aspersion 
of the profession. Hut the purer our Judges generally, the more 
Bbameless is it that some will not abandon either their vices or their 
office. 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 97 

Our land has little to fear from abroad, and much from 
within. We can bear foreign aggression, scarcity, the 
revulsions of commerce, plagues, and pestilences ; but 
we cannot bear vicious Judges, corrupt Courts, gambling 
Legislators, and a vicious, corrupt, and gambling constit- 
uency. Let us not be deceived ! The decay of civil in- 
stitutions begins at the core. The outside wears all the 
lovely hues of ripeness, when the inside is rotting. 
Decline does not begin in bold and startling acts ; but, as 
in autumnal leaves, in rich and glowing colors. Over 
diseased vitals, consumptive laws wear the hectic blush, 
a brilliant eye, and transparent skin. Could the public 
sentiment declare that personal morality is the first 
element of patriotism ; that corrupt Legislators are the 
most pernicious of criminals ; that the Judge who lets the 
villain off, is the villain's patron ; that tolerance of crime 
is intolerance of virtue, — our nation might defy all 
enemies and live forever ! 

And now, my young friends, I beseech you to let 
alone this evil before it be meddled with. You are safe 
from vice when you avoid even its appearance ; and only 
then. The first steps to wickedness are imperceptible. 
We do not wonder at the inexperience of Adam ; but it 
is wonderful that six thousand years' repetition of the 
same arts, and the same uniform disaster, should have 
taught men nothing! that generation after generation 
should perish, and the wreck be no warning ! 

The mariner searches his chart for hidden rocks, 
stands off from perilous shoals, and steers wide of reefs on 
which hang shattered morsels of wrecked ships, and runs 
in upon dangerous shores with the ship manned, the 
wheel in hand, and the lead constantly sounding. But 
the mariner upon life's sea, carries no chart of other 
men's voyages, drives before every wind that will speed 
him, draws upon horrid shores with slumbering crew, or 
heads in upon roaring reefs as though he would not 
perish where thousands have perished before him. 

Hell is populated with the victims of "harmless 
amusements. 9 Will man never learn that the way to hell 
is through the valley of deceit ? The power of Satan 
to hold his victims is nothing to that mastery of art by 
which he first gains them. When he approaches to 
7 



98 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

charm us, it is not as a grim fiend, gleaming from a lurid 
cloud, but as an angel of light radiant with innocence. 
His words fall like dew upon the flower ; as musical as 
the crystal-drop warbling from a fountain. Beguiled by 
his art, he leads you to the enchanted ground. Oh ! how 
it glows with every refulgent hue of heaven ! Afar off 
he marks the dismal gulf of vice and crime ; its smoke of 
torment slowly rising, and rising forever ! and he himself 
cunningly warns you of its dread disaster, for the very 
purpose of blinding and drawing you thither. He leads 
you to captivity through all the bowers of lulling magic. 
He plants your foot on odorous flowers ; he fans your 
cheeky with balmy breath ; he overhangs your head with 
rosy clouds ; he fills your ear with distant, drowsy music, 
charming every sense to rest. Oh ye ! who have thought 
the way to hell was bleak and frozen as Norway, parched 
and barren as Sahara, strewed like Golgotha with bones 
and skulls, reeking with stench like the vale of Gehenna, 
—witness your mistake ! The way to hell is gorgeous ! 
It is a highway, cast up ; no lion is there, no ominous 
bird to hoot a warning, no echoings of the wailing-pit, no 
lurid gleams of distant fires, or moaning sounds of hidden 
woe! Paradise is imitated to build you away to death ; 
the flowers of heaven are stolen and poisoned; the sweet 
plant of knowledge is here ; the pure white flower of re- 
ligion ; seeming virtue and the charming tints of inno- 
cence are scattered all along like native herbage. The 
enchanted victim travels on. Standing afar behind, and 
from a silver-trumpet, a heavenly messenger sends down 
the wind a solemn warning : There is a way which 

SEEMETH RIGHT TO MAN, BUT THE END THEREOF IS 

death. And again, with louder blast : The wise man 

FORESEETH THE EVIL ; FOOLS PASS ON AND ARE PUN- 
ISHED. Startled for a moment, the victim pauses; 
gazes round upon the flowery scene, and whispers, Is 
it not harmless? — "Harmless," responds a serpent from 
the grass ! — " Harmless" echo the sighing winds ! — 
" Harmless" re-echo a hundred airy tongues ! If 
now a gale from heaven might only sweep the clouds 
away through which the victim gazes ; oh ! if God would 
break that potent power which chains the blasts of hell, 
and let the sulphur-stench roll up the vale, how would 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 99 

the vision change ! — the road become a track of dead 
men's bones! — the heavens a lowering storm!- — the 
balmy breezes, distant wailings — and all those balsam- 
shrubs that lied to his senses, sweat drops of blood upon 
their poison-boughs ! 

Ye who are meddling with the edges of vice, ye are on 
this road ! — and utterly duped by its enchantments ! Your 
eye has already lost its honest glance, your taste has lost 
its purity, your heart throbs with poison ! The leprosy 
is all over you, its blotches and eruptions cover you. 
Your feet stand on slippery places, whence in due time 
they shall slide, if you refuse the warning which I raise. 
They shall slide from heaven, never to be visited by a 
gambler ; slide down to that fiery abyss below you, out of 
which none ever come. Then, when the last card is cast, 
and the game over, and you lost ; then, when the echo of 
your fall shall ring through hell, — in malignant triumph, 
shall the Arch-Gambler, who cunningly played for your 
soul, have his prey ! Too late you shall look back upon 
life as a mighty game, in which you were the stake, and 
Satan the winner 1 



LECTURE VI. 



All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doc- 
trine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness : that 
the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good 
works. 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17. 

Surely one cannot declare the whole counsel of God, 
and leave out a subject which is interwoven with almost 
every chapter of the Bible. So inveterate is the prejudice 
against introducing into the pulpit the subject of Licen- 
tiousness, that Ministers of the Gospel, knowing the vice 
to be singularly dangerous and frequent, have yet by 
silence almost complete, or broken only by circuitous 
allusions, manifested their submission to the popular taste.* 
That Vice upon which it has pleased God to be more 
explicit and full than upon any other; against which he 
uttered his voice upon Sinai, Thoil shalt not commit adultery; 
upon which the lawgiver, Moses, legislated with boldness ; 
which Judges condemned ; upon which the venerable 
Prophets spake oft and again ; against which Christ with 
singular directness and plainness uttered the purity of 
religion ; and upon which He inspired Paul to discourse 
to the Corinthians, and to almost every primitive church ; 
this subject, upon which the Bible does not so much 
speak, as thunder — not. by a single bolt, but peal after 
peal — we are solemnly warned not to introduce into the 
pulpit ! 

I am entirely aware of the delicacy of introducing this 
subject into the pulpit. 

One difficulty arises from the sensitiveness of unaffected 
purity. A mind, retaining all the dew and freshness of 

* The liberality with which this Lecture was condemned before I 
had written it, and the prompt criticisms afterwards, of those who did 
not hear it, have induced me to print it almost unaltered. Otherwise 
I should have changed many portions of it from forms of expression 
peculiar to the pulpit into those better suited to a book. 

(101) 



102 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

innocence, shrinks from the very idea of impurity, as if 
it were sin to have thought or heard of it, — as if even 
the shadow of the evil would leave some soil upon the 
unsullied whiteness of the virgin-mind. Shall Ave be 
angry with this? or shall we rudely rebuke so amiable a 
feeling, because it regrets a necessary duty ? God forbid ! 
If there be, in the world, that whose generous faults 
should be rebuked only by the tenderness of a reproving 
smile, it is the mistake of inexperienced purity. We 
would as soon pelt an angel, bewildered among men and 
half smothered with earth's noxious vapors, for his 
trembling apprehensions. To any such, who have half 
wished that I might not speak, I say: — Nor would I, did 
I not know that purity will suffer more by the silence of 
shame, than by the honest voice of truth. 

Another difficulty springs from the nature of the Eng- 
lish language, which has hardly been framed in a school 
where it may wind and fit itself to all the phases of im- 
purity. But were I speaking French — the dialect of re- 
fined sensualism and of licentious literature ; the language 
of a land where taste and learning and art wait upon the 
altars of impurity — then I might copiously speak of this 
evil, nor use one plain word. But I thank God, the 
honest English tongue which I have learned, has never 
been so bred to this vile subservience of evil. We have 
plain words enough to say plain things, but the dignity 
and manliness of our language has never grown supple to 
twine around brilliant dissipation. It has too many plain 
words, vulgar words, vile words ; but it has few mirror- 
words, which cast a sidelong image of an idea ; it has few 
words which wear a meaning smile, a courtesan-glance 
significant of something unexpressed. When public vice 
necessitates public reprehension, it is, for these reasons, 
difficult to redeem plainness from vulgarity. We must 
6peak plainly and properly ; or else speak by innuendo — 
which is the devil's language. 

Another difficulty lies in the confused echoes which 
vile men create in every community, when the pulpit 
listurbs them. Do I not know the arts of cunning men ? 
Did not Demetrius, the Silversmith (worthy to have 
lived in our day!) become most wonderfully pious, and 
run all over the city to rouse up the dormant zeal of 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 103 

Diana's worshippers, and gather a mob, to whom he 
preached that Diana must be cared for ; when, to his fel- 
low-craftsmen, he told the truth : our craft is in dan- 
ger ! Men will not quietly be exposed. They foresee 
the rising of a virtuously retributive public sentiment, as 
the mariner sees the cloud of the storm rolling up the 
heavens ! They strive to forestall and resist it. How 
loudly will a liquor-fiend protest against temperance lec- 
tures — sinful enough for redeeming victims from his paw ! 
How sensitive some men to a church bell ! they are high 
priests of revivals at a horse-race, a theatre, or a liquor- 
supper ; but a religious revival pains their sober minds. 
Even thus, the town will be made vocal with outcries 
against sermons on licentiousness. Who cries out? — the 
sober ? — the immaculate ? — the devout ? It is the voice 
of the son of midnight ; it is the shriek of the strange 
woman's victim ! and their sensitiveness is not of purity, 
but of fear ! Men protest against the indecency of the 
pulpit, because the pulpit makes them feel their own in- 
decency ; they would drive us from the investigation of 
vice, that they may keep t/ie field open for their own oc- 
cupancy. I expect such men's reproaches. I know the 
reasons of them. I am not to be turned by them, not one 
hair's breadth, if they rise to double their present volume, 
until I have hunted home the wolf to his lair, and ripped 
off his brindled hide in his very den ! 

Another difficulty exists, in the criminal fastidiousness 
of the community upon this subject. This is the coun- 
terfeit of delicacy. It resembles it less than paste-jewels 
do the pure pearl. Where delicacy, the atmosphere of a 
pure heart, is lost, or never was had, a substitute is 
sought ; and is found in forms of delicacy, not in its, feelings. 
It is a delicacy of exterior, of etiquette, of show, of rules ; 
not of thought, not of pure imagination, not of the crys- 
tal-current of the heart ! Criminal fastidiousness is the 
Pharisee's sepulchre ; clean, white, beautiful without, full 
of dead men's bones within ! — the Pharisee's platter, the 
Pharisee's cup — it is the very Pharisee himself; and like 
him of old, lays on burdens grievous to be borne. Deli- 
cacy is a spring which God has sunken in the rock, which 
the winter never freezes, the summer never heats ; which 
sends its quiet waters with music down the flowery hill- 



104 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

side, and which is pure and transparent, because it has 
at the bottom no sediment I would that every one of 
us had this well of life, gushing from our hearts — an 
everlasting and full stream ! 

False modesty always judges by the outside ; it cares 
how you speak, more than what. That which would out- 
rage in plain words, may be implied furtively, in the sal- 
lies of wit or fancy, and be admissible. Every day I see 
this giggling modesty, which blushes at language more 
than at its meaning ; which smiles upon base things, if 
they will appear in the garb of virtue ! That disease of 
mind to which I have frequently alluded in these lectures, 
which leads it to clothe vice beautifully and then admit it, 
has had a fatal effect also upon Literature ; giving cur- 
rency to filth, by coining it in the mint of beauty. It is 
under the influence of this disease of taste and heart, that 
we hear expressed such strange judgments upon English 
authors. Those who speak plainly what they mean, 
when they speak at all, are called rude and vulgar ; while 
those upon whose exquisite sentences the dew of indeli- 
cacy rests like so many brilliant pearls of the morning 
upon flow r ers, are called our moral authors ! 

The most dangerous writers in the English language 
are those whose artful insinuations and mischievous polish 
reflect upon the mind the image of impurity, without pre- 
senting the impurity itself. A plain vulgarity in a writer 
is its own antidote. It is like a foe who attacks us 
openly, and gives us opportunity of defence. But im- 
purity, secreted under beauty, is like a treacherous friend 
who strolls with us in a garden of sweets, and destroys us 
by the odor of poisonous flowers proffered to our senses. 
Let the reprehensible grossness of Chaucer be compared 
with the perfumed, elaborate brilliancy of Moore's license. 
I would not willingly answer at the bar of God for the 
writings of either; but of the two, I would rather bear 
the sin of Chaucer's plain-spoken words, which never sug- 
gest more than they say, than the sin of -Moore's lan- 
guage, over which plays a witching hue and shade of 
licentiousness. I would rather put the downright, and 
often abominable vulgarity of Swift into my child's hand, 
than the scoundrel-indirections of Sterne. They are both 
impure writers ; but not equally harmful. The one says 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 105 

what he means ; the other means what he dare not say. 
Swift is, in this respect, Belial in his own form ; Sterne 
is Satan in the form of an angel of light : and many will 
receive the temptation of the Angel, who would scorn the 
proffer of the Demon. What an incredible state of mor- 
als, in the English church, that permitted two of her emi- 
nent clergy to be the most licentious writers of the age, 
and as impure as almost any of the English literature ! 
Even our most classic authors have chosen to elaborate, 
with exquisite art, scenes which cannot but have more ef- 
fect upon the passions than upon the taste. Em- 
bosomed in the midst of Thomson's glowing Seasons, one 
tinds descriptions unsurpassed by any part of Don Juan ; 
and as much more dangerous than it is, as a courtesan, 
countenanced by virtuous society, is more dangerous than 
when among her own associates. Indeed, an author who 
surprises you with refined indelicacies in moral and rep- 
utable writings, is worse than one, who, without dis- 
guise-, and on purpose, serves up a whole banquet of in- 
delicacies. Many will admit poison-morsels well sugared, 
who would revolt from an infernal feast of impurity. 
There is little danger that robbers will tempt the honest 
young to robbery. Some one first tempts him to false- 
hood ; next, to petty dishonesties; next, to pilfering; 
then, to thieving ; and now, only, will the robber in- 
fluence him, when others have handed him down to his 
region of crime. Those authors who soften evil, and 
show deformity with tints of beauty ; who arm their gen- 
eral purity with the occasional sting of impurity ; — these 
are they who take the feet out of the straight path — the 
guiltiest path of seduction. He who feeds an inflamed 
appetite with food spiced to fire, is less guilty than he 
who hid in the mind the leaven which wrought this ap- 
petite. The polished seducer is certainly more danger- 
ous than the vulgar debauchee — both in life and in liter- 
ature. 

In this contrast are to be placed Shakespeare and 
Bulwer: Shakespeare is sometimes gross, but not often 
covertly impure. Bulwer is slily impure, but not often 
gross. I am speaking, however, only of Shakespeare's 
Plays, and not of his youthful fugitive pieces ; which, I 
am afraid, cannot have part in this exception. Jle 



106 LECTURES TO YOUXG MEN. 

began wrong, but grew better. At first, he wrote by the 
taste of his age ; but when a man, he wrote to his own 
taste : and though he is not without sin, yet, compared 
with his contemporaries, he is not more illustrious for his 
genius than for his purity. Reprehension, to be effec- 
tive, should be just. No man is prepared to excuse 
properly the occasional blemishes of this wonderful 
writer, who has not been shocked at the immeasurable 
licentiousness of the Dramatists of his cycle. One play 
of Ford, one act, one conversation, has more abomina- 
tions than the whole world of Shakespeare. Let those 
women, who ignorantly sneer at Shakespeare, remember 
that they are indebted to him for the noblest conceptions 
of woman's character in our literature — the most praise- 
worthy, because he found no models in current authors. 
The occasional touches of truth and womanly delicacy in 
the early Dramatists are no compensation for the whole- 
sale coarseness and vulgarity of their female characters. 
In Shakespeare, woman appears in her true form — pure, 
disinterested, ardent, devoted ; capable of the noblest 
feelings and of the highest deeds. The language of 
many of Shakespeare's women would be shocking in our 
day ; but so would be the domestic manners of that age. 
The same actions may in one age be a sign of corruption, 
and be perfectly innocent in another. No one is shocked 
that in a pioneer-cabin, one room serves for a parlor, a 
kitchen, and a bed-room, for the whole family, and for 
promiscuous guests. Should fastidiousness revolt at this, 
as vulgar, — the vulgarity must be accredited to the fas- 
tidiousness, and not to the custom. Yet, it would be in- 
excusable in a refined metropolis, and everywhere the 
moment it ceases to be necessary. But nothing in these 
remarks must apologize for language or deed, which in- 
dicates an impure heart. No age, no custom, may plead 
extenuation for essential lust ; and no sound mind can re- 
frain from commendation of the master-dramatist of the 
world, when he learns that in writing for a most licen- 
tious age, he rose above it so far as to become something 
like a model to it of a more virtuous way. Shakespeare 
left the dramatical literature immeasurably purer than ii 
came to him. 

Bulwerhas made the English novel-literature more vile 



THE STKA3GE W0MA3*. 107 

than he found it. The one was a reformer, the other an 
implacable corrupter. We respect and admire I he one, 
(while we mark his faults,) because he withstood his 
age; and we despise with utter loathing the other, whose 
specific gravity of wickedness sunk him below the level ot 
his own age. With a moderate caution, Shakespeare 
may be safely put into the hands of the young. I regard 
the admission of Bulvver as a crime against the first prin- 
ciples of virtue. 

In all the cases which I have considered, you will 
remark a greater indulgence to that impurity which 
breaks out on the surface, than to that which lurks in the 
blood and destroys the constitution. It is the curse of 
our literature that it is traversed by so many rills of im- 
purity. It is a vast champaign, waving with unex- 
ampled luxuriance of flower, and vine, and fruit ; but the 
poisonous flower everywhere mingles with the pure ; and 
the deadly cluster lays its cheek on the wholesome grape ; 
nay, in the same cluster grow both the harmless and the 
hurtful berry ; so that the hand can hardly be stretched 
out to gather flower or fruit without coming back 
poisoned. It is botli a shame and an amazing wonder, 
that the literature of a Christian nation should reek with 
a filth which Pagan antiquity could scarcely endure ; that 
the Ministers of Christ should have left floating in the 
pool of offensive writings, much that would have brought 
blood to the cheek of a Roman priest, and have shamed 
an actor of the school of Aristophanes. Literature is, in 
turn, both the cause and effect of the spirit of the age. 
Its effect upon this age has been to create a lively relish 
for exquisitely artful licentiousness, and disgust only for 
vulgarity. A witty, brilliant, suggestive indecency is tol- 
erated for the sake of its genius. An age which trans- 
lates and floods the community with French novels, 
(inspired by Venus and Bacchus,) which reprints in pop- 
ular forms, Byron, and Bulwer, and Moore, and Fielding, 
proposes to revise Shakespeare and expurgate the 
Bible ! ! Men who, at home, allow Don Juan to lie 
within reach of every reader, will not allow a Minister of 
the gospel to expose the evil of such a literature ! To 
read authors whose lines drop with tin 1 very gall of death ; 
to vault in elegant dress as near the edge of indecency as 



108 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

is possible without treacling over ; to express the utmost 
possible impurity so dexterously, that not a vulgar word is 
used, but rosy, glowing, suggestive language — this, with 
many, is refinement. But to expose the prevalent vice ; 
to meet its glittering literature with the plain and manly 
language of truth ; to say nothing except what one 
desires to say plainly — this, it seems, is vulgarity ! 

One of the first steps in any reformation must be, not 
alone nor first the correction of the grossness, but of the 
elegancies of impurity. Could our literature, and men's 
conversation, be put under such authority that neither 
should express, by insinuation, what dared not be said 
openly, in a little time, men would not dare to say at all 
what it would be indecent to speak plainly. 

If there be here any disciples of Bulwer ready to dis- 
port in the very ocean of license, if its waters only seem 
translucent ; who can read and relish all that fires the 
heart, and are only then distressed and shocked when a 
serious man raises the rod to correct and repress the evil ; 
if there be here any who can drain his goblet of mingled 
wine, and only shudder at crystal-water ; any who can see 
this modern prophet of villany strike the rock of corrup- 
tion, to water his motley herd of revellers, but hate him 
who out of the Rock of Truth should bid gush the health- 
ful stream ; — I beseech them to bow their heads in this 
Christian assembly, and weep their tears of regret in 
secret places, until the evening service be done, and Bul- 
wer can staunch then' tears, and comfort again their 
wounded hearts. 

Whenever an injunction is laid upon plain and undeni- 
able scripture-truth, and I am forbidden, upon pain of 
3'our displeasure, to preach it ; then, I should not so much 
regard my personal feelings, as the affront which you put 
upon my master ; and in my inmost soul I shall resent 
that affront. There is no esteem, there is no love, like 
that which is founded in the sanctity of religion. Between 
many of you and me, that sanctity exists. I stood by your 
side when you awoke in the dark valley of conviction, and 
owned yourselves lost. I have led you by the hand out 
of the darkness; by your side I have prayed, and my tears 
have mingled with yours. I have bathed you in the crys- 
tal-waters of a holy baptism ; and when you sang the 



TfrE STRANGE WOMAN. 109 

song of the ransomed captive, it filled my heart with a 
joy as great as that which uttered it. Love, beginning 
in such scenes, and drawn from so sacred a fountain, is 
not commercial, not fluctuating. Amid severe toils and 
not a few anxieties, it is the crown of rejoicing to a 
Pastor. What have we in this world but you'' To be 
your servant in the gospel, we renounce all those paths by 
which other men seek preferment. Silver and gold is not 
in our houses, and our names are not heard where fame 
proclaims others. Rest we are forbidden until death ; 
and girded with the whole armor, our lives are spent in 
the dust and smoke of continued battle. But even -such 
love will not tolerate bondage. We can be servants to 
love, but never slaves to caprice ; still less can we heed 
the mandates of iniquity ! 



The proverbs of Solomon are designed to furnish us a 
series of maxims for eveT-y relation of life. There will 
naturally be the most said where there is the most needed. 
If the frequency of warning against any sin measures the 
liability of man to that sin, then none is worse than Im- 
purity. In many separate passages is the solemn warn- 
ing against the strange woman given with a force which 
must terrify all but the innocent or incorrigible ; and with 
a delicacy which all will feel but those whose modesty is 
the fluttering of an impure imagination. I shall take 
such parts of all these passages as will make out a con- 
nected narrative. 

When wisdom enter eth into thy heart, and knowledge is 
pleasant unto thy soul, discretion shall preserve thee . . . 
to deliver thee from the strange woman, which flatter eth with 
her tongue ; her lips drop as a honey-comb, her mouth is 
smoother than oil. She sitteth at the door of her house on 
a seat in the high places of the city, to call to passengers 
who go right on their ways : " Whoso is simple let him turn 
in hither." 7b him that wanteth understanding, she saith, 
" Stolen waters are sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleas- 
ant ; " but he knoweth not that the dead are there. Lust not 
after her beauty, neither let her take thee with her eyelids. 



110 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

Sheforsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the cove- 
nant of her God. Lest thou should.st ponder the path of 
life, her wags are movable, that thou canst not know them. 
Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door 
of her house, for her house inclineth unto death. She has 
cast down many wounded ; yea, many strong men have been 
slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to 
the chamber of death ; none that go unto her y return again ; 
neither take they hold of the paths of life. Let not thy heart 
decline to her ways, lest thou mourn at last, when thy flesh 
and thy body are consumed, and say : " How have I hated 
instruction, and my heart despised reproof. I was in all 
evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly." 

I. Can language be found which can draw a corrupt 
beauty so vividly as this ; Which forsaketh the guide of her 
youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God. Look out 
upon that fallen creature whose gay sally through the 
street calls out the significant laugh of bad men, the pity 
of good men, and the horror of the pure. Was not her 
cradle as pure as ever a loved infant pressed ? Love 
soothed its cries. Sisters watched its peaceful sleep, and 
a mother pressed it fondly to her bosom ! Had you after- 
wards, when spring-flowers covered the earth, and every 
gale was odor, and every sound was music, seen her, 
fairer than the lily or the violet, searching them, would 
you not have said, " Sooner shall the rose grow poisonous 
than she ; both may wither, but neither corrupt." And 
how often, at evening, did she clasp her tiny hands in 
prayer ? How often did she put the wonder-raising ques- 
tions to her mother, of God, and heaven, and the dead — 
as if she had seen heavenly things in a vision ! As young 
womanhood advanced, and these fore-shadowed graces 
ripened to the bud and burst into bloom, health glowed in 
her cheek, love looked from her eye, and purity was an 
atmosphere around her. Alas ! she forsook the guide of 
her youth. Faint thoughts of evil, like a far-off cloud 
which the sunset gilds, came first ; nor does the rosy sun- 
set blush deeper along the heaven, than her cheek, at the 
first thought of evil. Now, ah ! mother, and thou guid- 
ing older si>ter, could you have seen the lurking spirit 
embosomed in that cloud, a holy prayer might have broken 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. HI 

the spell, a tear have washed its stain ! Alas 1 they saw 
it not; she spoke it not; she was forsaking the guide of 
her youth. She thinketh no more of heaven. She 
breatheth no more prayers. She hath no more penitential 
tears to shed ; until, after a long life, she drops the bitter 
tear upon the cheek of despair, — then her only suitor. 
Thou hast forsaken the covenant of thy God. Go down ! 
fall never to rise ! Hell opens to be thy home ! 

Oh Prince of torment! if thou hast transforming 
power, give some relief to this once innocent child, whom 
another has corrupted ! Let thy deepest damnation seize 
him who brought her hither ! let his coronation be upon 
the very mount of torment! and the rain of fiery hail be 
his salutation ! He shall be crowned with thorns poi- 
soned and anguish-bearing ; and every woe beat upon 
him, and every wave of hell roll over the first risings of 
baffled hope. Thy guilty thoughts, and guilty deeds, 
shall flit after thee with bows which never break, and 
quivers forever emptying but never exhausted ! If Satan 
hath one dart more poisoned than another; if God hath 
one bolt more transfixing and blasting than another; if 
there be one hideous spirit more unrelenting than 
others ; they shall be thine, most execrable wretch ! who 
led her to forsake the guide of her youth, and to abandon 
the covenant of her God. 

II. The next injunction of God to the young is upon 
the ensnaring danger of Beauty. Desire not her beauty 
in thy heart, neither let her take thee with her eyelids. God 
did not make so much of nature with exquisite beauty, 
or put within us a taste for it, without object. He meant 
that it should delight us. He made every flower to charm 
us. He never made a color, nor graceful-flying bird, nor 
silvery insect, without meaning to please our taste. 
When He clothes a man or woman with beauty, He con- 
fers a favor, did we know how to receive it. Beauty, 
with amiable dispositions and ripe intelligence, is more to 
any woman than a queen's crown. The peasant's 
daughter, the rustic belle, if they have woman's sound 
discretion, may be rightfully prouder than king's 
daughters ; for God adorns those who are both good and 
beautiful ; man can only conceal the want of beauty, by 
blazing jewels. 



112 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

As moths and tiny insects flutter around the bright 
blaze which was kindled for no harm, so the foolish 
young, fall down burned and destroyed by the blaze of 
beauty. As the flame which burns to destroy the insect, 
is consuming itself and soon sinks into the socket, so 
beauty, too often, draws on itself that ruin which it in- 
flicts upon others. 

If God hath given thee beauty, tremble; for it is as 
gold in thy house — thieves and robbers will prowl around 
and seek to possess it. If God hath put beauty before 
thine eyes, remember how many strong men have been 
cast down wounded by it. Art thou stronger than 
David? Art thou stronger than mighty patriarchs? — 
than kings and princes, who, by its fascinations, have lost 
peace and purity, and honor, and riches, and armies, and 
even kingdoms ? Let other men's destruction be thy 
wisdom; for it is hard to reap prudence upon the field of 
experience. 

III. In the minute description of this dangerous 
creature, mark next how seriously we are cautioned of 
her Wiles. 

Her wiles of dress. Coverings of tapestry and the fine 
linen of Egypt are hers ; the perfumes of myrrh and aloes 
and cinnamon. Silks and ribbons, laces and rings, gold 
and equipage ; ah ! how mean a price for damnation. 
The wretch who would be hung simply for the sake of 
riding to the gallows on a golden chariot, clotlied in 
king's raiment — what a fool were he ! Yet how many 
content to enter the chariot of Death, — drawn by the 
fiery steeds of lust which fiercely fly, and stop not for 
food or breath till they have accomplished their fatal 
journey — if they may spread their seat with flowery 
silks, or flaunt their forms with glowing apparel and 
precious jewels ! 

Her wiles of speech. Beasts may not speak ; this 
honor is too high for them. To God's imaged-son this 
prerogative belongs, to utter thought and feeling in 
articulate sounds. We may breathe our thoughts to a 
thousand ears, and infect a multitude with the best por- 
tions of our soul. How, then, has this soul's breath, this 
echo of our thoughts, this only image of our feelings, 
been perverted, that from the lips of sin it hath more 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 113 

persuasion, than from the lips of wisdom ! What horrid 
wizard hath put the world under a spell and charm, that 
words from the lips of a strange woman shall ring 
upon the ear like tones of music ; while words from the 
divine lips of religion fall upon the startled ear like the 
funeral tones of the burial-bell! Philosophy seems crab- 
bed ; sin, fair. Purity sounds morose and cross ; but 
from the lips of a harlot, words drop as honey, and flow 
smoother than oil ; her speech is fair, her laugh is merry 
as music. The eternal glory of purity has no lustre, but 
the deep damnation of lust is made as bright as the gate 
of heaven! 

Her wiles of love. Love is the mind's light and 
heat; it is that tenuous air in which all the other facul- 
ties exist, as we exist in the atmosphere. A mind of the 
greatest stature without love, is like the huge pyramid of 
Egypt — chill and cheerless in all its dark halls and pas- 
sages. A mind with love, is as a king's palace lighted 
for a royal festival. 

Shame ! that the sweetest of all the mind's attributes 
should be suborned to sin ! that this daughter of God 
should become a Ganymede to arrogant lusts! — the cup- 
bearer to tyrants ! — yet so it is. Devil-tempter ! will thy 
poison never cease ? — shall beauty be poisoned ? — shall 
language be charmed ? — shall love be made to defile like 
pitch, and burn as the living coals ? Her tongue is like 
a bended bow, which sends the silvery shaft of flattering 
words. Her eyes shall cheat thee, her dress shall beguile 
thee, her beauty is a trap, her sighs are baits, her 
words are lures, her love is poisonous, her flattery is the 
spider's web for thee. Oh ! trust not thy heart nor ear 
with Delilah ! The locks of the mightiest Samson are 
soon shorn off, if he will but lay his slumbering head upon 
her lap. He who could slay heaps upon heaps of Philis- 
tines, and bear upon his huge shoulders the ponderous 
iron-gate, and pull down the vast temple, was yet too weak 
to contend with one wicked artful woman ! Trust the sea 
with thy tiny boat, trust the fickle wind, trust the chang- 
ing skies of April, trust the miser's generosity, the tyrant's 
mercy; but ah! simple man, trust not thyself near the 
artful woman, armed in her beauty, her cunning raiment, 
her dimpled smiles, her sighs of sorrow r , her look of love, 
8 



114 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

her voice of flattery ; — for if thou hadst the strength of 
ten Ulysses, unless God help thee, Calypso shall make thee 
fast and hold thee in her island ! 

Next beware the wile of her reasonings. To him that 
wanteth understanding she saith, stolen waters are sweet, 
and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. I came forth to meet 
thee, and I have found thee. 

What says she in the credulous ear of inexperience? 
Why, she tells him that sin is safe ; she swears to him 
that sin is pure; she protests to him that sin is innocent. 
Out of history she will entice him, and say : Who hath 
ever refused my meat-offerings and drink-offerings ? What 
king have I not sought? What conqueror have 1 not 
conquered ! Philosophers have not, in all their wisdom, 
learned to hate me. I have been the guest of the world's 
greatest men. The Egyptian priest, the Athenian sage, 
the Roman censor, the rude Gaul, have all worshipped in 
my temple. Art thou afraid to tread where Plato trod, 
and the pious Socrates? Art thou wiser than all that 
ever lived ? 

Nay, she readetli the Bible to him ; she goeth back 
along the line of history, and readetli of Abraham, and 
of his glorious compeers ; she skippeth past Joseph with 
averted looks, and readetli of David and of Solomon ; 
and whatever chapter tells how good men stumbled, there 
she has turned down a leaf, and will persuade thee, with 
honeyed speech, that the best deeds of good men were 
their sins, and that thou shouldst only imitate them in 
their stumbling and falls ! 

Or, if the Bible will not cheat thee, how will she plead 
thine own nature ; how will she whisper, God hath made 
thee so. How, like her father, will she lure thee to pluck 
the apple, saying, Thou shalt not surely die. And she will 
hiss at virtuous men, and spit on modest women, and 
shake her serpent-tongue at any purity which shall keep 
thee from her ways. Oh ! then listen to what God says : 
With much fair speech she causeth him to yield ; with the 
flattery of her lips she forced him. He goeth after her as 
an ox goeth to slaughter, or as a fool to the correction 
of the stocks, till a dart strike through his liver, — as a bird 
hasteth to c snare and hnoiveth not that it is for his life. 

1 wiil point only to another wile. When inexperience 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 115 

has been beguiled by her infernal machinations, how, like 
a flock of startled birds, will spring up late regrets, and 
shame, and fear; and worst of all, how will conscience ply 
her scorpion-whip and lash thee, uttering with stern vis- 
age, " thou art dishonored, thou art a wretch, thou art 
lost ! " When the soul is full of such outcry, memory 
cannot sleep; she wakes, and while conscience still plies 
the scourge, will bring back to thy thoughts, youthful 
purity, home, a mother's face, a sister's love, a father's 
counsel. Perhaps it is out of the high heaven that thy 
mother looks down to see thy baseness. Oh ! if she has 
a mother's heart, — nay, but she cannot weep for thee 
there ! 

These wholesome pains, not to be felt if there were not 
yet health in the mind, would save the victim, could they 
have time to work. But how often have I seen the spider 
watch, from his dark, round hole, the struggling fly, until 
he began to break his web ; and then dart out to cast his 
long lithe arms about him, and fasten new cords stronger 
than ever. So, God saith, the strange woman shall se- 
cure her ensnared victims, if they struggle : Lest thou 
shouldst 'ponder the path of life, her wags are movable that 
thou canst not know them. 

She is afraid to see thee soberly thinking of leaving her, 
and entering the path of life ; therefore her ways are 
movable. She multiplies devices, she studies a thousand 
new wiles, she has some sweet word for every sense — ob- 
sequience for thy pride, praise for thy vanity, generosity 
for thy selfishness, religion for thy conscience, racy quips 
for thy wearisomeness, spicy scandal for thy curiosity. 
She is never still, nor the same ; but evolving as many 
shapes as the rolling cloud, and as many colors as dress 
the wide prairie. 

IV. Having disclosed her wiles, let me show you what 
God says of the chances of escape to those who once 
follow her : None that go unto her return again, neither 
take they hold of the paths of life. The strength of this 
language was not meant absolutely to exclude hope from 
those who, having wasted their substance in riotous liv- 
ing, Mould yet return ; but to warn the un fall en, into 
what an almost hopeless gulf they plunge, if they venture. 
Some may escape — as here and there a mangled sailor 



116 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

crawls out of the water upon the beach, — the only one 
or two of the whole crew ; the rest are gurgling in the 
wave with impotent struggles, or already sunk to the 
bottom. There are many evils which hold their victims 
by the force of habit ; there are others which fasten them 
by breaking their return to society. Many a person 
never reforms, because reform would bring no relief. 
There are other evils which hold men to them, because 
they are like the beginning of a fire ; they tend to burn 
with fiercer and wider flames, until all fuel is consumed, 
and go out only when there is nothing to burn. Of this 
last kind is the sin of licentiousness : and when the con- 
flagration once breaks out, experience has shown, what 
the Bible long ago declared, that the chances of reforma- 
tion are few indeed. The certainty of continuance is so 
great, that the chances of escape are dropped from the 
calculation ; and it is said roundly, none that go unto 

HER RETURN AGAIN. 

V. We are repeatedly warned against the strange 
woman's house. 

There is no vice like licentiousness, to delude with the 
most fascinating proffers of delight, and fulfill the prom- 
ise with the most loathsome experience. All vices at 
the beginning are silver-tongued, but none so impassioned 
as this. All vices in the end cheat their dupes, but none 
with such overwhelming disaster as licentiousness. I 
shall describe by an allegory, its specious seductions, its 
plausible promises, its apparent innocence, its delusive 
safety, its deceptive joys, — their change, their sting, their 
flight, their misery, and the victim's ruin. 

Her house has been cunningly planned by an evil 
architect to attract and please the attention. It stands 
in a vast garden full of enchanting objects. It shines in 
glowing colors, and seems full of peace and full of pleas- 
ure. All the signs are of unbounded enjoyment — safe, if 
not innocent. Though every beam is rotten, and the 
house is the house of death, and in it are all the vicissi- 
tudes of internal misery; yet to the young it appears a 
palace of delight. They will not believe that- death can 
lurk behind so brilliant a fabric. Those who are within, 
look out and pine to -eturn ; and those who are without, 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 117 

look In and pine to enter. Such is the mastery of delud- 
ing sin. 

That part of the garden which borders on the highway 
of innocence is carefully planted. There is not a poison- 
weed, nor thorn, nor thistle there. Ten thousand flowers 
bloom, and waft a thousand odors. A victim cautiously 
inspects it ; but it has been too carefully patterned upon 
innocency to be easily detected. This outer garden is 
innocent ; — innocence is the lure to wile you from the path 
into her grounds ; — innocence is the bait of that trap by 
which she has secured all her victims. At the gate 
stands a comely porter, saying blandly : Whoso is simple 
let him turn in hither. Will the youth enter? Will he 
seek her house ? To himself he says, " I will enter only 
to see the garden, — its fruits, its flowers, its birds, its 
arbors, its warbling fountains ! " He is resolved in vir- 
tue. He seeks wisdom, not pleasure! — Dupe! you are 
deceived already ; and this is your first lesson of wisdom. 
He passes, and the porter leers behind him ! He is 
within an Enchanter's garden! Can he not now return, 
if he wishes ? — he will not wish to return, until it is too 
late. He ranges the outer garden near to the highway, 
thinking as he walks: "How foolishly have I been 
alarmed at pious lies about this beautiful place! I heard 
it was Hell : I find it is Paradise ! " 

Emboldened by the innocency of his first steps, he ex- 
plores the garden further from the road. The flowers 
grow richer ; their odors exhilarate ; the very fruit 
breathes perfume like flowers ; and birds seem intoxi- 
cated with delight among the fragrant shrubs and loaded 
trees. Soft and silvery music steals along the air. "Are 
angels singing? — Oh ! fool that I was, to fear this place; 
it is all the heaven I need ! Ridiculous priest, to tell 
me that death was here, where all is beauty, fragrance, 
and melody ! Surely, death never lurked in so gorgeous 
apparel as this ! Death is grim, and hideous ! " He has 
come near to the strange woman's house. If it was 
beautiful from afar, it is celestial now ; for his eyes are 
bewitched with magic. When our passions enchant us, 
how beautiful is the way to death ! In every window 
are sights of pleasure ! from every opening, issue sounds 
of joy — the lute, the harp, bounding feet, and echoing 



118 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN*. 

laughter. Nymphs have descried this Pilgrim of temp- 
tation ; — they smile and beckon. Where are his resolu- 
tions now ? This is the virtuous youth who came to 
observe! He has already seen too much! but he will 
see more ; he will taste, feci, regret, weep, wail, die ! The 
most beautiful nymph that eyes ever rested on, approaches 
with decent guise and modest gestures, to give him hos- 
pitable welcome. For a moment he recalls his home, his 
mother, his sister-circle ; but they seem far-away, dim, 
powerless ! Into his ear the beautiful herald pours the 
sweetest sounds of love ; "You are welcome here, and 
worthy! You have early wisdom, to break the bounds 
of superstition, and to seek these grounds where summer 
never ceases, and sorrow never comes ! Hail ! and wel- 
come to the House of pleasure ! " There seemed to be a 
response to these words ; the house, the trees, and the 
very air. seemed to echo, "Hail! and welcome!" In 
the stillness which followed, had the victim been less in- 
toxicated, he might have heard a clear and solemn voice 
which seemed to fall straight down from heaven : Come 
nut nigh the door of her house. Her house is 
the wat to hell, going down to the chambers of 

DEATH ! 

It is too late! He has gone in, — who shall never re- 
turn. He goeth after her straightway as an ox goeth to 
the slaughter ; or as a foot to the correction of the stocks 
. . . and htoweth not that it is for his life. 

Enter with me, in imagination, the strange woman's 
house — where, God grant you may never enter in any 
ether way. There are five wards — Pleasure, Satiety, 
Discovery, Di-ease, and Death. 

Ward of Pleasure — The eye is dazzled with the mag- 
nificence of its apparel, — elastic velvet, glossy silks. 1 ui- 
nished satin, crimson drapery, plushy carpets. Exqui>ite 
pictures glow upon the walls, carved marble adorns every 
niche. The inmates are deceived by these lying shows ; 
they dance, they sing; with beaming eyes they utter 
softest strains of flattery and graceful compliment. They 
partake the amorous wine, and the repast which loads 
the table. They eat, they drink, they are blithe and 
merry. Surely, they should be ; for after this brief hour, 
they shall never know purity nor joy again ! For this 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 119 

moment's revelry, they are selling heaven ! The strange 
woman walks among her guests in all her charms ; fans 
the flame of joy, scatters grateful odors, and urges on the 
fatal revelry. As her poisoned wine is quaffed, and the 
gay creatures begin to reel, the torches wane and cast 
but a twilight. One by one, the guests grow somnolent ; 
and, at length, they all repose. Their cup is exhausted, 
their pleasure is forever over, life has exhaled to an 
essence, and that is consumed ! While they sleep, ser- 
vitors, practised to the work, remove them all to another 
Ward. 

Ward of Satiety — Here reigns a bewildering twilight 
through which can hardly be discerned the wearied in- 
mates, yet sluggish upon their couches. Overflushed 
with dance, sated with wine and fruit, a fitful drowsiness 
vexes them. They wake, to crave ; they taste, to 
loathe ; they sleep, to dream ; they wake again from 
unquiet visions. They long for the sharp taste of pleas- 
ure, so grateful yesterday. Again they sink, repining to 
sleep ; by starts, they rouse at an ominous dream ; by 
starts, they hear strange cries ! The fruit burns and 
torments ; the wine shoots sharp pains through their 
pulse. Strange wonder fills them. They remember the 
recent joy, as a reveller in the morning thinks of his mid- 
night-madness. The glowing garden and the banquet 
now seem all stripped and gloomy. They meditate 
return; pensively they long for their native spot! At 
sleepless moments, mighty resolutions form, — substantial 
as a dream. Memory grows dark. Hope will not shine. 
The past is not pleasant ; the present is wearisome ; and 
the future gloomy. 

The Ward of Discovery — In the third ward no decep- 
tion remains. The floors are bare ; the naked walls drip 
filth ; the air is poisonous with sickly fumes, and echoes 
with mirth concealing hideous misery. None supposes 
that he has been happy. The past seems like the dream 
of the miser, who gathers gold spilled like rain upon the 
road, and wakes, clutching his bed, and crying " where 
is it ? " On your right hand, as you enter, close by the 
door, is a group of fierce felons in deep drink with drug- 
ged liquor. With red and swoln faces, or white and thin, 
or scarred with ghastly corruption ; with scowling brows, 



120 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

baleful eyes, bloated lips and demoniac grins ; — in person 
all uncleanly, in morals all debauched, in peace, bankrupt 

the desperate wretches wrangle one with the other, 

swearing bitter oaths, and heaping reproaches each upon 
each ! Around the room you see miserable creatures 
unappareled, or dressed in rags, sobbing and moaning. 
That one who gazes out at the window, calling for her 
mother and weeping, was right tenderly and purely bred. 
She has been baptized twice, — once to God, and once to 
the Devil. She sought this place in the very vestments 
of God's house. "Call not on thy mother! she is a 
saint in Heaven, and cannot hear thee !" Yet, all night 
long she dreams of home, and childhood, and wakes to 
sigh and weep : and between her sobs, she cries " mother! 
mother ! " 

Yonder is a youth, once a servant at God's altar. His 
hair hangs tangled and torn ; his eyes are bloodshot ; his 
face is livid ; his fist is clenched. All the day, he wan- 
ders up and down, cursing sometimes himself, and some- 
times the wretch that brought him hither ; and when he 
sleeps, he dreams of Hell ; and then he wakes to feel all 
he dreamed. This is the Ward of reality. All know 
why the first rooms looked so gay — they were enchanted ! 
It was enchanted wine they drank ; and enchanted fruit 
they ate : now they know the pain of fatal food in every 
limb! 

Ward of Disease Ye that look wistfully at the pleas- 
ant front of this terrific .house, come with me now, and 
look long into the terror of this Ward ; for here are the 
seeds of sin in their full harvest form ! We are in a 
lazar-room ; its air oppresses every sense; its sights con- 
found our thoughts ; its sounds pierce our ear ; its stench 
repels us ; it is full of diseases. Here a shuddering 
wretch is clawing at his breast, to tear away that worm 
which gnaws his heart. By him is another, whose limbs 
are dropping from his ghastly trunk. Next, swelters an- 
other in reeking filth ; his eyes rolling in bony sockets, 
every breath a pang, and every pang a groan. But yon- 
der, on a pile of rags, lies one w r hose yells of frantic 
agony appall every ear. Clutching his rags with spas- 
modic grasp, his swoln tongue lolling from a blackened 
mouth, his bloods! * v«a glaring and rolling, he shrieks 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 121 

oaths; now blaspheming God, and now imploring him. 
He hoots and shouts, and shakes his grisly head from 
side to side, cursing or praying ; now calling death, and 
then, as if driving away fiends, yelling, avaunt ! avaunt ! 
Another has been ridden by pain, until he can no 
longer shriek ; but lies foaming and grinding his teeth, 
and clenches his bony hands, until the nails pierce the 
palm — though there is no blood there to issue out — 
trembling all the time with the shudders and chills of 
utter agony. The happiest wretch in all this Ward, is 
an Idiot; — dropsical, distorted, and moping ; all day he 
wags his head, and chatters, and laughs, and bites his 
nails ; then he will sit for hours motionless, with open 
jaw, and glassy eye fixed on vacancy. In this ward are 
huddled all the diseases of pleasure. This is the tor- 
ture-room of the strange woman's House, and it excels 
the Inquisition. The wheel, the rack ; the bed of 
knives, the roasting fire, the brazen room slowly heated, 
the slivers driven under the nails, the hot pincers, — what 
are these to the agonies of the last days of licentious 
vice ? Hundreds of rotting wretches would change their 
couch of torment in the strange woman's House, for the 
gloomiest terror of the Inquisition, and profit by the 
change. Nature herself becomes the tormentor. Nature, 
long trespassed on and abused, at length casts down the 
wretch ; searches every vein, makes a road of every nerve 
for the scorching feet of pain to travel on, pulls at every 
muscle, breaks in the breast, builds fires in the brain, eats 
out the skin, and casts living coals of torment on the 
heart. What are hot pincers to the envenomed claws of 
disease ? What is it to be put into a pit of snakes and 
slimy toads, and feel their cold coils or piercing fang, to 
the creeping of a whole body of vipers? — where every 
nerve is a viper, and every vein a viper, and every mus- 
cle a serpent ; and the whole body, in all its parts, coils 
and twists upon itself in unimaginable anguish ? I tell 
you, there is no Inquisition so bad as that which the 
Doctor looks upon ! Young man ? I can show you in 
this Ward worse pangs than ever a savage produced at 
the stake!— than ever a tyrant wrung out by engines of 
torment ! — than ever an inquisitor devised ! Every year, 
in every town, die wretches scalded and scorched with 



122 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

agony. Were the sum of all the pain that comes with 
the last stages of vice collected, it would rend the very 
heavens with its outcry; would shake the earth ; would 
even blanch the cheek of Infatuation ! Ye that are lis- 
tening in the garden of this strange woman, among her 
cheating flowers ; ye that are dancing in her halls in the 
first Ward, come hither ; look upon her fourth Ward — 
its vomited blood,- its sores and fiery blotches, its pru- 
rient sweat, its dissolving ichor, and rotten bones! Stop, 
young man ! You turn your head from this ghastly 
room ; and yet, stop ! — and stop soon, or thou shalt lie 
here ! mark the solemn signals of thy passage ! Thou 
hast already enough of warnings in thy cheek, in thy 
bosom, in thy pangs of premonition! 

But ah! every one of you who are dancing with the 
covered paces of death, in the strange woman's first hall, 
let me break your spell ; for now I shall open the doors 
of the last Ward. Look ! — Listen ! — Witness your own 
end, unless you take quickly a warning ! 

Ward of Death. — No longer does the incarnate wretch 
pretend to conceal her cruelty. She thrusts — aye ! as if 
they were dirt — she shovels out the wretches. Some 
fall headlong through the rotten floor, — a long fall to a 
fiery bottom. The floor trembles to deep thunders "which 
roll below Here and there, jets of flame sprout up, and 
give a lurid light to the murky hall. Some would fain 
escape ; and flying across the treacherous floor, which 
man never safely passed, they go, through pitfalls and 
treacherous traps, with hideous outcries and astounding 
yells, to perdition ! Fiends laugh ! The infernal laugh, 
the cry of agony, the thunder of damnation, shake the 
very roof and echo from wall to wall. 

Oh ! that the young might see the end of vice before 
they see the beginning! I know that you shrink from 
this picture; but your safety requires that you should 
look long into the Ward of Death, that fear may supply 
strength to your virtue. See the blood oozing from the 
wall, the fiery hands which pluck the wretches down, the 
li&ht of hell gleaming through, and hear its roar as of a 
distant ocean chafed with storms. Will you sprinkle the 
wall with your blood? — will you feed those flames wit h 
your flesh ? — will you add your voice to those thundering 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 123 

wails? — will you go down a prey through the fiery floor 
of the chamber of death ? Believe then the word of God : 
Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of 
death* • . • avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and 
pass away! 

I have described the strange woman's House in strong 
language, and it needed it. If your taste shrinks from 
the description, so does mine. Hell, and all the ways of 
hell, when we pierce the cheating disguises and see the 
truth, are terrible aud trying to behold ; and if men 
would not walk there, neither would we pursue their 
steps, to sound the alarm, and gather back whom we 
can. 

Allow me to close by directing your attention to a few 
points of especial danger, 

I. I solemnly warn you against indulging a morbid 
imagination. In that busy and mischievous faculty be- 
gins the evil. Were it not for his airy imaginations, man 
might stand his own master — not overmatched by the 
worst part of himself. But ah ! these summer-reveries, 
these venturesome dreams, these fairy castles, builded for 
no good purposes, — they are haunted by impure spirits, 
who will fascinate, bewitch, and corrupt you. Blessed 
are the pure in heart. Blessed art thou, most favored of 
God, whose thoughts are chastened ; whose imagination 
will not breathe or fly in tainted air ; and whose path 
hath been measured by the golden reed of Purity. 

May I not paint Purity, as a saintly virgin, in spot- 
less white, walking with open face, in an air so clear that 
no vapor can stain it ? 

"Upon her lightning-brow love proudly sitting, 
Flames out in power, shines out in majesty." 

Her steps are a queen's steps ; God is her father, and 
thou her brother, if thou wilt make her thine ! Let thy 
heart be her dwelling ; wear upon thy hand her ring, and 
on thy breast her talisman. 

II. Next to evil imaginations, I warn the young of 
evil companions. Decaying fruit corrupts the neighbor- 
ing fruit. You cannot make your head a metropolis of 
base stones, the ear and tongue a highway of immodest 
words, and yet be pure. Another, as well as yourself, 



124 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

may throw a spark on the magazine of your passions — 
beware how your companions do it ! jNo man is your 
friend who will corrupt you. An impure man. is every 
good man's enemy — your deadly foe ; and all the worse, 
if he hide his poisoned dagger under the cloak of good 
fellowship. Therefore, select your associates, assort 
them, winnow them, keep the grain, and let the wind 
sweep away the chaff. 

III. But I warn you, with yet more solemn emphasis, 
against evil books and evil pictures. There is in 
every town an under-current which glides beneath our 
feet unsuspected by the pure ; out of which, notwith- 
standing, our sons scoop many a goblet. Books are 
hidden in trunks, concealed in dark holes ; pictures are 
stored in sly portfolios, or trafficked from hand to hand ; 
and the handiwork of depraved art is seen in other forms 
which ought to make a harlot blush. 

I should think a man would loathe himself, and wake 
up from owning such things as from a horrible night- 
mare. Those who circulate them are incendiaries of 
morality ; those who make them, equal the worst public 
criminalsc A pure heart would shrink from these abom- 
inable things as from death. France, where religion long 
ago went out smothered in licentiousness, has flooded the 
world with a species of literature redolent of depravity. 
Upon the plea of exhibiting nature and man, novels are 
now scooped out of the very lava of corrupt passions. 
They are true to nature, but to nature as it exists in 
knaves and courtesans. Under a plea of humanity, we 
have shown up to us, troops of harlots, to prove that they 
are not so bad as purists think ; gangs of desperadoes', to 
show that there is nothing in crime inconsistent with the 
noblest feelings. We have in French and English novels 
of the infernal school, humane murderers, lascivious 
saints, holy infidels, honest robbers. These artists never 
seem lost, except when straining after a conception of re- 
ligion. Their devotion is such as might be expected 
from thieves, in the purlieus of thrice-deformed vice. 
Exhausted libertines are our professors of morality. 
They scrape the very sediment and muck of society to 
mould their creatures ; and their volumes are monster- 
galleries, in which the inhabitants of old Sodom would 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 125 

have felt at home as connoisseurs and critics. Over 
loathsome women, and unutterably vile men, huddled to- 
gether in motley groups, and over all their monstrous 
deeds, their lies, their plots, their crimes, their dreadful 
pleasures, their glorying conversation, is thrown the 
checkered light of a hot imagination, until they glow with 
an infernal lustre. Novels of the French school, and of 
English imitators, are the common-sewers of society, into 
which drain the concentrated filth of the worst passions, 
of the worst creatures, of the worst cities. Such novels 
come to us impudently pretending to be reformers of 
morals and liberalizers of religion ; they propose to in- 
struct our laws, and teach a discreet humanity to justice ! 
The Ten plagues have visited our literature ; water is 
turned to blood ; frogs and lice creep and hop over our 
most familiar things, — the couch, the cradle, and the 
bread-trough ; locusts, murrain, and fire, are smiting 
every green thing. I am ashamed and outraged when I 
think that wretches could be found to open these foreign 
seals, and let out their plagues upon us — that any Satanic 
Pilgrim should voyage to France to dip from the dead 
sea of her abomination, a baptism for our sons. It were 
a mercy to this, to import serpents from Africa and pour 
them out on our prairies ; lions from Asia, and free them 
in our forests ; lizards and scorpions and black tarantulas, 
from the Indies, and put them in our gardens. Men 
could slay these, but those offspring-reptiles of the French 
mind, who can kill these ? You might as well draw 
sword on a plague, or charge a malaria with the bayonet. 
This black-lettered literature circulates in this town, floats 
in our stores, nestles in the shops, is fingered and read 
nightly, and hatches in the young mind broods of salaci- 
ous thoughts. While the parent strives to infuse Chris- 
tian purity into his child's heart, he is anticipated by 
most accursed messengers of evil ; and the heart hisses 
already like a nest of young and nimble vipers. 

IV. Once more, let me persuade you that no examples 
in high places, can justify imitation in low places. Your 
purity is too precious to be bartered, because an official 
knave tempts by his example. I would that every emi- 
nent place of state were a sphere of light, from which 
should be flung down on your path a cheering glow to 



126 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

guide you on to virtue. But if these wandering stars, 
reserved I do believe for final blackness of darkness, 
wheel their malign spheres in the orbits of corruption, — 
go not after them. God is greater than wicked great 
men ; heaven is higher than the highest places of nations ; 
and if God and heaven are not brighter to your eyes than 
great men in high places, then you must take part in their 
doom, when, ere long, God shall dash them to pieces ! 

V. Let me beseech you, lastly, to guard your heart- 
purity. Never lose it ; if it be gone, you have lost from 
the casket the most precious gift of God. The first 
purity of imagination, of thought, and of feeling, if 
soiled, can be cleansed by no fuller's soap ; if lost, can- 
not be found, though sought carefully with tears. If a 
harp be broken, art may repair it ; if a light be quenched, 
the flame may enkindle it ; but if a flower be crushed, 
what art can repair it ? — if an odor be wafted away, who 
can collect or bring it back ? * 

The heart of youth is a w r ide prairie. Over it hangs 
the clouds of heaven to water it, the sun throws its broad 
sheets of light upon it, to wake its life ; out of its bosom 
spring, the long season through, flowers of a hundred 
names and hues, twining together their lovely forms, 
wafting to each other a grateful odor, and nodding each 
to each in the summer-breeze. Oh ! such would man be, 
did he hold that purity of heart which God gave him ! 
But you have a depraved heart. It is a vast conti- 
nent ; on it are mountain-ranges of powers, and dark 
deep streams, and pools, and morasses. If once the full 
and terrible clouds of temptation do settle thick and 
fixedly upon you, and begin to cast down their dreadful 
stores, may God save whom man can never ! Then the 
heart shall feel tides and streams of irresistible power, 
mocking its control, and hurrying fiercely down from 
steep to steep, with growing desolation. Your only 
resource is to avoid the uprising of your giant-passions. 

We are drawing near to a festival day,* by the usage 
of ages, consecrated to celebrate the birth of Christ. At 
his advent, God hung out a prophet-star in the heaven ; 
guided by it, the wise men journeyed from the east and 
worshipped at his feet. Oh ! let the star of Purity hang 

*This Lecture was delivered upon Cliristnias-eve. 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 127 

out to thine eye, brighter than the orient orb to the 
Magi ; let it lead thee, not to the Babe, but to His feet 
who now stands in Heaven, a Prince and Saviour ! If 
thou hast sinned, one look, one touch, shall cleanse thee 
whilst thou art worshipping, and thou slialt rise up 
healed 



LECTURE VII. 

Rejoice, young man. in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the 
days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the 
sight of thine eyes ; but know thou, that for all these things God 
will bring thee into judgment. Eccl. xi. 9. 

I am to venture the delicate task of reprehension, 
always unwelcome, but peculiarly offensive upon topics of 
public popular amusement. I am anxious, in the begin- 
ning, to put myself right with the young. If I satisfy 
myself, Christian men, and the sober community, and do 
not satisfy them, my success will be like a physician's, 
whose prescriptions please himself, and the relations, and 
do good to everybody except the patient, — he dies. 

Allow me, first of all, to satisfy you that I am not 
meddling with matters which do not concern me. This 
is the impression which the patrons and partners of 
criminal amusements study to make upon your minds. 
They represent our duty to be in the church, — taking care 
of doctrines, and of our own members. When more than 
this is attempted ; when we speak a word for you who 
are not church-members, we are met with the surly 
answer, " Why do you meddle with things which don't 
concern you? If you do not enjoy these pleasures, why 
do you molest those who do? May not men do as they 
please in a free country, without being hung up in a 
gibbet of public remark ?" It is conveniently forgotten, 
I suppose, that in a free country we have the same right 
to criticise pleasure, which others have to enjoy it. 
Indeed, you and I both know, young gentlemen, that in 
coffee-house circles, and in convivial feasts nocturnal, the 
Church is regarded as little better than a spectacled old 
beldam, whose impertinent eyes are spying everybody's 
business but her own ; and who, too old or too homely to 
be tempted herself, with compulsory virtue, pouts at the 
joyous dalliances of the young and gay. Religion is 
9 (119, 



130 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

called a Jiun, sable with gloomy vestments , and the 
Church a cloister, where ignorance is deemed innocence, 
and which sends out querulous reprehensions of a world, 
which it knows nothing about, and has professedly aban- 
doned. This is pretty ; and is only defective, in not 
being true. The Church is not a cloister, nor her 
members recluses, nor are our censures of vice intermed- 
dling. Not to dwell in generalities, let us take a plain 
and common case : 

A strolling company offer to educate our youth ; and to 
show the community the road of morality, which, proba- 
bly they have not seen themselves for twenty years. We 
cannot help laughing at a generosity so much above one's 
means: and when they proceed to hew and hack each 
other with rusty iron, to teach our boys valor ; and dress 
up practical mountebanks, to teach theoretical virtue ; if 
we laugh somewhat more, they turn upon us testily : Do 
you mind your own business, and leave us with ours. We 
do not interfere with your preaching, do you let alone our 
acting. 

But softly — may not religious people amuse themselves 
with very diverting men ? I hope it is not bigotry to 
have eyes and ears : I hope it is not fanaticism, in the use 
of these excellent senses, for us to judge that throwing 
one's heels higher than their head a-dancing, is not exactly 
the way to teach virtue to our daughters ; and that 
women, whose genial warmth of temperament has led 
them into a generosity something too great, are not the 
persons to teach virtue, at any rate. Oh ! no ; we are 
told, Christians must not know that all this is very sin- 
gular-. Christians ought to think that men who are kings 
and dukes and philosophers on the stage, are virtuous 
men, even if they gamble at night, and are drunk all day ; 
and if men are so used to comedy, that their life becomes 
a perpetual farce on morality, we have no right to laugh 
at this extra professional acting. 

Are we meddlers, who only seek the good of our own 
families, and of our own community where we live and 
expect to die ? or they, who wonder up and down without 
ties of social connection, and without aim, except of money 
to be gathered off from men's vices? 

I am anxious to put all religious men in their right 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 131 

position before you ; and in this controversy between them 
and the gay world, to show you the facts upon both sides. 
A floating population, in pairs or companies, without leave 
asked, blow tiie trumpet for all our youth to flock to their 
banners i Are they related to them ? — are they concerned 
in the welfare of our town ? — do they live among us? — 
do they bear any part of our burdens ? — do they care for 
our substantial citizens? We grade our streets, build 
our schools, support all our municipal laws, and the young 
men are ours ; our sons, our brothers, our wards, clerks, 
or apprentices ; they are living in our houses, our stores, 
our shops, and we are their guardians, and take care of 
them in health, and watch them in sickness ; yet every 
vagabond who floats in hither, swears and swaggers, as if 
they were all his*: and when they offer to corrupt all these 
youth, we paying them round sums of money for it, and 
we get courage finally to say that we had rather not ; that 
industry and honesty are better than expert knavery — 
they turn upon us in great indignation with, Why don't 
you mind your own business — what are you meddling with 
oar affairs for ? 

I will suppose a case. With much pains-taking, I have 
saved enough money to buy a little garden-spot. I put 
all around it a good fence — I put the spade into it and 
mellow the soil full deep ; I go to the nursery and pick 
out choice fruit trees — I send abroad and select the best 
seeds of the rarest vegetables ; and so my garden thrives. 
I know every inch of it, for I have watered every inch 
with sweat. One morning I am awakened by a mixed 
sound of sawing, digging, and delving ; and looking out, 
I see a dozen men at work in my garden. I run down 
and find one man sawing out a huge hole in the fence. 
"My dear sir, what are you doing?" "Oh, this high 
fence is very troublesome to climb over ; I am fixing an 
easier way for folks to get in." Another man has headed 
down several choice trees, and is putting in new grafts. 
" Sir, what are you changing the kind for ? " " Oh, this 
kind don't suit me ; I like a new kind." One man is 
digging up my beans, to plant cockles ; another is rooting 
up my strawberries, to put in pursley ; and another is 
destroying my currants, and gooseberries, and raspberries, 
to plant mustard and Jamestown weed. At last, I lose 



132 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

all patience, and cry out, " Well, gentlemen, this will 
never do. I will never tolerate this abominable imposi- 
tion ; you are ruining my garden." One of them says, 
" You old hypocritical bigot ! do mind your business, and 
let us enjoy ourselves. Take care of your house, and do 
not pry into our pleasures." 

Fellow-citizens ! I own that no man could so invade 
your garden ; but men are allowed thus to invade our 
town, and destroy our children. You will let them evade 
your laws, to fleece and demoralize you ; and you sit down 
under their railing, as though you were the intruders ! — 
just as if the man, who drives a thief out of his house, 
ought to ask the rascal's pardon for interfering with his 
little plans of pleasure and profit ! 

Every parent has a right — every citizen and every 
minister has the same right, to expose traps, which men 
have to set them ; the same right to prevent mischief, 
which men have to plot it ; the same right to attack vice, 
which vice has to attack virtue ; a better right to save our 
sons and brothers, and companions, than artful men have 
to destroy them. 

The necesstity of amusemant, is admitted on all hands. 
There is an appetite of the eye, of the ear, and of every 
sense, for which God has provided the material. Gaiety 
of every degree, this side of puerile levity, is wholesome 
to the body, to the mind, and to the morals. Nature is 
a vast repository of manly enjoyments. The magnitude 
of God's works is not less admirable than its exhilarating 
beauty. The rudest forms have something of beauty ; 
the ruggedest strength is graced with some charm ; the 
very pins, and rivets, and clasps of nature, are attractive 
by qualities of beauty more than is secessary for mere 
utility. The sun could go down without gorgeous clouds ; 
evening could advance without its evanescent brilliance ; 
trees might have flourished without symmetry ; flowers 
have existed without odor, and fruit without flavor. 
When I have journeyed through forests, where ten 
thousand shrubs and vines exist without apparent use ; 
through prairies, whose undulations exhibit sheets of 
flowers innumerable, and absolutely dazzling the eye with 
their prodigality of beauty — beauty, not a tithe of which 
is ever seen by man — I have said, it is plain that God is 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 133 

himself passionately fond of beauty, and the earth is his 
garden, as an acre is man's. God has made us like Him- 
self, to be pleased by the universal beauty of the world. 
He has made provision in nature, in society, and in the 
family, for amusement and exilaration enough to fill the 
heart with the perpetual sunshine of delight. 

Upon this broad earth purtied with flowers, scented 
with odors, brilliant in colors, vocal with echoing and re- 
echoing melody, I take my stand against all demoraliz- 
ing pleasure. Is it not enough that our Father's house 
is so full of dear delights, that we must wander prodigal 
to the swine-herd for husks, and to the slough for drink ? 
— when the trees of God's heritage bend over our head, 
and solicit our hand to pluck the golden fruitage, must 
we still go in search of the apples of Sodom — outside 
fair, and inside ashes ? 

Men shall crowd to the Circus to hear clowns, and see 
rare feats of horsemanship ; but a bird may poise beneath 
the very sun, or flying downward, swoop from the high 
heaven ; then flit with graceful ease hither and thither, 
pouring liquid song as if it were a perennial fountain of 
sound — no man cares for that. ■ 

Upon the stage of life, the vastest tragedies are per- 
forming in every act ; nations pitching headlong to their 
final catastrophe ; others, rising their youthful forms to 
begin the drama of their existence. The world of society 
is as full of exciting interest, as nature is full of beauty. 
The great dramatic throng of life is hustling along — the 
wise, the fool, the clown, the miser, the bereaved, the 
broken-hearted. Life mingles before us smiles and tears, 
sighs and laughter, joy and gloom, as the spring mingles 
winter-storm and summer-sunshine. To this vast Thea- 
tre which God hath builded, where stranger plays are 
seen than ever author writ, man seldom cares to come. 
When God dramatizes, when nations act, or all the 
human kind conspire to educe the vast catastrope, men 
sleep and snore, and let the busy scene go on, unlooked, 
unthought upon; and turn from all its varied magnifi- 
cence to hunt out some candle-lighted hole and gaze at 
drunken ranters, or cry at the piteous virtue of harlots in 
distress. It is my object then, not withdraw the young 
from pleasure, but from unworthy pleasures ; not to 



i34 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

lessen their enjoyments, bat to increase them, by reject- 
;:na the vile. 

Of gambling, I bave already sufficient 1 .; Of 

cock-fightii j. and pugili- ;sts, I need 

- speak but little. The 

of del .: no man becomes d 

criminal, until he has been gen .. criminal. N< 
one spreads his s;;il uj on such wal 
brutal amusements are but the gulf into which flow 
all tfa ms : ximinaJ pleasures; and they who 

embark upon the river, are sailing toward the gulf, 
waded all the depths of iniquity, and 
burned ev n to the socket, find in rage and 

and blood, the y stimulus of which they are sus 
ble. You are t: just such 

wretches, if you are exhausting your passions in illicit 
indul 

As if is :\ ~- le to analyze, separately, each vicious 
amusemt: -d to the y ui _-. I an mpelled to 

select two. each the i res ::ative of a clan. Tku-. the 
_lied to the amusement of Eacing, apply 
equally well to all violent amusements which congregate 
indolent and I men, by ministering inl 

excitement. The reasonings applied to the Theatre, 
with some modifications, apply to the Circus, to promis- 
cuous balls, tc night-revelling, bacclianaliau — d to 
other similar indulges; s. 

Many, who are not in danger, may incline to turn from 
these pag live in rural districts, in villages, or 

towns, and are out of the reach of jock 
and gamblers. This ie y reason v should 

read. TVe are such a migratory. .-. that our 

home is usually everywhere but at home ; and almost 
every young man makes annual, or biennial visits 
famous cities : conveying produce to market, or purchas- 
_ Is. It is at such tin 5 tl t the young 
are in extreme danger ; for they are particularly anxious, 
at such times. their full age. A young man 

is shamed, in a great m raw and not to 

know the the bar and of the town. They 

on a very remarkable air. - 
they affect profusion of think it meet for a 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 135 

gentleman to know all that certain other city-gentlemen 
seem proud of knowing. As sober citizens are not found 
lounging at Hotels ; and the gentlemanly part of the 
travelling community are usually retiring, modest, and 
unnoticeable, — the young are left to come in contact 
chiefly with a very flash class of men who swarm about 
city-Restaurateurs and Hotels, — swoln clerks, crack 
sportsmen, epicures, and rich, green youth, seasoning. 
These are the most numerous class which engage the 
attention of the young. They bustle in the sitting 
room, or crowd the bar, assume the chief seats at the 
table, and play the petty lord in a manner so brilliant, as 
altogether to dazzle our poor country boy, who mourns at 
his deficient education, at the poverty of his rural oaths, 
and the meagerness of those illicit pleasures, which he 
formerly nibbled at with mouselike stealth ; and he sighs 
for these riper accomplishments. Besides, it is well 
known, that large commercial establishments have, resid- 
ing at such hotels, well appointed clerks to draw custo- 
mers to their counter. It is their business to make your 
acquaintance, to fish out the propable condition of your 
funds, to sweeten your temper with delicate tit-bits of 
pleasure ; to take you to the Theatre, and a little 
further on, if need be ; to draw you in to a generous sup- 
per, and initiate you to the high life of men whose 
whole life is only the varied phases of lust, gastronomical 
or amorous. 

Besides these, there lurk in such places lynx-eyed pro- 
curers ; men who have an interest in your appetites ; who 
look upon a young man, with some money, just as a 
butcher looks upon a bullock — a thing of so many pounds 
avoirdupois, of so much beef, so much tallow, and a hide. 
If you have nothing, they will have nothing to do with 
you ; if you have means, they undertake to supply you with 
the disposition to use them. They know the city, they 
know its haunts, they know its secret doors, its blind pas- 
sages, ils spicy pleasures, its racy vices, clear down to the 
mud-slime of the very bottom. 

Meanwhile, the accustomed restraint of home cast off, 
the youth feels that he is unknown, and may do what he 
chooses, unexposed. There is, moreover, an intense 
curiosity to see many things of which he has long ago 



136 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

heard and wondered ; and it is the very art and education 
of vice, to make itself attractive. It comes with gar- 
lands of roses about its brow, with nectar in its goblet, 
and love upon its tongue. 

If you have, beforehand, no settled opinions as to what 
is right and what is wrong ; if your judgment is now, for 
the first time, to be formed upon the propriety of your 
action ; if you are not controlled by settled principles, 
there is scarcely a chance for your purity. 

For this purpose, then, I desire to discuss these things, 
that you may settle your opinions and principles before 
temptation assails you. As a ship is built upon the dry 
shore, which afterwards is to dare the storm and brave 
the sea, so would I build you staunch and strong, ere you 
be launched abroad upon life. 

I. Racing. This amusement justifies its existence by 
the plea of utility. We will examine it upon its own 
ground. "Who are the patrons of the Turf? — farmers? — 
laborers ? — men who are practically the most interested 
in the improvement of stock ? The unerring instinct of 
self-interest would lead these men to patronize the 
Course, if its utility were real. It is notorious that these 
are not the patrons of racing. It is sustained by two 
classes of men — gambling jockeys and jaded rich men. 
In England, and in our own country, where the turf- 
sports are freshest, they owe their existence entirely to 
the extraordinary excitement which they afford to dissi- 
pation, or to cloyed appetites. For those industrial pur- 
poses for which the horse is chiefly valuable, for roadsters, 
hacks, and cart-horses, what do the patrons of the turf 
care? Their whole anxiety is centered upon winning 
cups and stakes ; and that is incompariably the best blood 
which will run the longest space in the shortest time. 
The points required for this are not, and never will be, 
the points for substantial service. And it is notorious, 
that racing in England deteriorated the stock in such 
important respects, that the light-cavalry and dragoon- 
service suffered severely, until dependence upon turf 
stables was abandoned. New England, where racing is 
unknown, is to this day the place where the horse exists 
in the finest qualites ; and for all economical purposes, 
Virginia and Kentucky must yield to New England. 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 137 

Except for the sole purpose of racing, an eastern liorse 
brings a higher price than any other. 

The other class of patrons who sustain a Course are 
mere gambling jockeys. As crows to a corn-field, or 
vultures to their prey ; as flies to summer-sweet, so to 
the annual races, flow the whole tribe of gamesters and 
pleasure-lovers. It is the Jerusalem of wicked men ; and 
thither the tribes go up, like Israel of old, but for a far 
different sacrifice. No form of social abomination is un- 
known or unpractised; and if all the good that is 
claimed, and a hundred times more, were done to horses, 
it would be a dear bargain. To ruin men for the sake of 
improving horses; to sacrifice conscience and purity for 
the sake of good bones and muscles in a beast ; this is 
paying a little too much for good brutes. Indeed, the 
shameless immorality, the perpetual and growing dis- 
honesty, the almost immeasurable secret villany of gen- 
tlemen of the turf, has alarmed and disgusted many 
stalwart racers, who, having no objection to some evil, 
are appalled at the very ocean of depravity which rolls 
before them. I extract the words of one of the leading 
sportsmen of England. " How many fine domains have 
been shared among these hosts of rapacious sharks, during 
the last two hundred years ; 'and, unless the system be 
altered, how many more are doomed to fall into the same 
gulf! For, we lament to say, the evil has increased : all 
heretofore has been ' tarts and cheese-cakes ' to the 
villanous proceedings of the last twenty years of the English 
turf" 

I will drop this barbarous amusement, with a few 
questions. 

What have you, young men, to do with the turf, ad- 
mitting it to be what it claims, a school for horses'? Are 
you particularly interested in that branch of learning? 

Is it safe to accustom yourselves to such tremendous 
excitement as that of racing ? 

Is the invariable company of such places of a kind 
which you ought to be found in ? — will races make you 
more moral ? — more industrious ? — more careful ? — 
economical ? — trustworthy ? 

You who have attended them, what advice would you 



138 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

give a young man, a younger brother for instance, who 
should seriously ask if he had better attend ? 

I disgress to say one word to women. When a Course 
was opened at Cincinnati, ladies would not attend it : 
when one was opened here, ladies would not attend it : 
For very good reasons — they were ladies. If it be said 
that they attend the Races at the South and in England, 
I reply, that they do a great many other things which 
you would not choose to do. 

Roman ladies could see hundreds of gladiators stab 
and hack each other — could you ? Spanish ladies can 
see savage bull-fights — would you ? It is possible for a 
modest woman to countenance very questionable prac- 
tices, where the customs of society and the universal 
public opinion approve them. But no woman can set 
herself against public opinion, in favor of an immoral sport, 
without being herself immoral; for, if worse be wanting, 
it is immorality enough for a woman to put herself 
where her reputation will lose its suspiciousless lustre. 

II. The Theatre. Desperate efforts are made, year 
by year, to resuscitate this expiring evil. Its claims are 
put forth with vehemence. Let us examine them. 

The drama cultivates the taste. Let the appeal be to 
facts. Let the roll of English literature be explored — 
our Poets, Romancers, Historians, Essayists, Critics, and 
Divines — and for what part of their memorable writings 
are we indebted to the Drama? If we except one period 
of our literature, the claim is wholly groundless ; and at 
this day, the truth is so opposite to the claim, that extrav- 
agance, affectation, and rant, are proverbially denomi- 
nated theatrical. If agriculture should attempt to super- 
sede the admirable implements of husbandry, now in 
use, by the primitive plough or sharpened sticks, it 
would not be more absurd than to advocate that clumsy 
machine of literature, the Theatre, by the side of the 
popular lecture, the pulpit, and the press. It is not con- 
genial to our age or necessities. Its day is gone by — it 
is in its dotage, as might be suspected, from the weakness 
of the garrulous apologies which it puts forth. 

It is a school of morals. — Yes, doubtless ! So the 
guillotine is defended on the plea of humanity. Inquisi- 
tors declare their racks and torture-beds to be the instru- 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 133 

merits of love, affectionately admonishing the fallen of 
the error of their ways. The slave-trade has been de- 
fended on the plea of humanity, and slavery is now de- 
fended for its mercies. Were it necessary for any school 
or party, doubtless we should hear arguments to prove 
the Devil's grace, and the utility of his agency among 
men. 

But, let me settle these impudent pretensions to 
Theatre- virtue, by the home thrust of a few plain ques- 
tions. 

Will any of you who have been to Threatres, please to 
tell me whether virtue ever received important accessions 
from the gallery of Theatres ? , 

Will you tell me whether the Pit is a place where an 
ordinarily modest man would love to seat his children ? 

Was ever a Theatre known where a prayer at the 
opening, and a prayer at the close, would not be torment- 
ingly discordant ? 

How does it happen, that in a school for morals, the 
teachers never learn their own lessons ? 

Would you allow a son or daughter to associate alone 
with actors or actresses? 

Do these men who promote virtue so zealously when 
acting, take any part in public moral enterprises, when 
their stage dresses are off? 

Which would surprise you most, to see actors steadily 
at Church, or to see Christians steadily at a Theatre? 
Would not both strike you as singular incongruities? 

What is the reason that loose and abandoned men 
abhor religion in a Church, and love it so much in a 
Theatre? 

Since the Theatre is the handmaid of virtue, why are 
drinking houses so necessary to its neighborhood, yet so 
offensive to Churches? The trustees of the Tremont 
Theatre in Boston, publicly protested against an order of 
council forbidding liquor to be sold on the premises, on 
the ground that it was impossible to support the Theatre 
without it. 

I am told that Christians do attend the Theatres. 
Then I will tell them the story of the Ancients. A 
holy monk reproached the devil for stealing a young 



140 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

man who was found at the Theatre. He promptly 
replied, " I found him on my premises, and took him." 

But, it is said, if Christians would take Theatres in 
hand, instead of abandoning them to loose men, they 
might become the handmaids of religion. 

The Church has had an intimate acquaintance with 
the Theatre for eighteen hundred years. Daring that 
period, every available agent for the diffusion of morality 
has been earnestly tried. The Drama has been tried. 
The result is, that familiarity has bred contempt and 
abhorrence. If, after so long and thorough an acquaint- 
ance, the Church stands the mortal enemy of Threatres, 
the testimony is conclusive. It is the evidence of gener- 
ations speaking by the most sober, thinking, and honest 
men. Let not this vagabond prostitute pollute any 
longer the precincts of the Church, with impudent pro- 
posals of alliance. When the Church needs an alliance 
it will not look for it in the kennel. Ah ! what a bliss- 
ful scene Mould that be — the Church and Theatre hn- 
paradisel in each other's arms ! What a sweet conjunc- 
tion would be made, could we build our Churches so as 
to preach in the morning, and play in them by night ! 
And how melting it would be, beyond the love of David 
and Jonathan, to see minister and actor in loving em- 
brace ; one slaying Satan by direct thrusts of plain 
preaching, and the other sucking his very life out by the 
enchantment of the Drama! To this millennial scene of 
Church and Theatre, I only suggest a single improve- 
ment : that the vestry be enlarged to a ring for a Circus, 
when not wanted for prayer-meetings; that the Sabbath- 
school room should be furnished with card-tables, and 
useful texts of scripture might be printed on the cards, 
for the pious meditations of gamblers during the inter- 
vals of play and worship. 

But if these places are put down, men will go to worse 
ones. Where will they find worse ones? Are those who 
go to the Theatre, the Circus, the Race-course, the men 
who abstain from worse places? It is notorious that the 
crowd of theatre-goers are vomited up from these worse 
places. It is notorious that the Theatre is the door to 
all the sinks of iniquity. It is through this infamous 
place that the young learn to love those vicious associates 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 141 

and practices to which, else, they would have been 
strangers. Half the victims of the gallows and of the 
Penitentiary will tell you, that these schools for morals 
were to them the gate of debauchery, the porch of pollu- 
tion, the vestibule of the very house of Death. 

The Drama makes one acquainted with human life, and 
with nature. It is too true. There is scarcely an evil 
incident to human life, which may not be fully learned 
at the Theatre. Here flourishes every variety of wit — 
ridicule of sacred things, burlesques of religion, and 
licentious double-entendres. Nowhere can so much of 
this lore be learned, in so short a time, as at the Theatre. 
There one learns how pleasant a thing is vice; amours 
are consecrated; license is prospered; and the young 
come away alive to the glorious liberty of conquest and 
lust. But the stage is not the only place about the 
Drama where human nature is learned. In the Boxes 
the young may make the acquaintance of those who 
abhor home and domestic quiet ; of those who glory in 
profusion and obtrusive display ; of those who expend 
all, and more than their earnings, upon gay clothes and 
jewelry ; of those who think it no harm to borrow their 
money without leave from their employer's till ; of those 
who despise vulgar appetite, but affect polished and gen- 
teel licentiousness. Or, lie may go to the Pit, and learn 
the whole round of villain-life, from masters in the art. 
He may sit down among thieves, blood-loving scoundrels, 
swindlers, broken-down men of pleasure — the coarse, the 
vulgar, the debauched, the inhuman, the infernal. Or, 
if still more of human nature is wished, he can learn yet 
more ; for the Theatre epitomizes every degree of cor- 
ruption. Let the virtuous young scholar go to the Gal- 
lery, and learn there, decency, modesty, and refinement, 
among the quarreling, drunken, ogling, mincing, brutal 
women of the brothel ! Ah ! there is no place like the 
Theatre for learning human nature! A young man can 
gather up more experimental knowledge here in a week, 
than elsewhere in half a year. But I wonder that the 
Drama should ever confess the fact ; and yet more, that 
it should lustily plead in self-defence, that Theatres teach 
men so much of human nature! Here are brilliant bars, 
to teach the young to drink ; here are gay companions. 



142 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

to undo iii half an hour tLe scruples formed by an educa- 
tion of years ; here are pimps of pleasure, to delude the 
brain with bewildering sophisms of license; here is 
pleasure, all flushed in its gayest, boldest, most fascinat- 
ing forms; and few there be who can resist its wiles, and 
fewer yet who can yield to them and escape ruin. If 
you would pervert the taste. — go to the Theatre. If you 
would imbibe false views — go to the Theatre. If you 
would efface as speedily as possible all qualms of con- 
science — £0 to the Theatre. If you would put yourself 
irreconcilably against the spirit of virtue and religion — 
20 to the Theatre. If vou would be infected with each 
particular vice in the catalogue of Depravity — go to the 
Theatre. Let parents, who wish to make their children 
weary of home and quiet domestic enjoyments, take them 
to the Theatre. If it be desirable for the young to 
loathe industry and didactic reading, and burn for tierce 
excitements, and seek them by stealth or through pilfer- 
ings. if need be — then send them to the Theatre. It is 
notorious that the bill of fare at these temples of pleas- 
ure is made up to the taste of the lower appetites; that 
low comedy, and lower farce, running into absolute 
obscenity, are the only means of filling a house. Thea- 
tres which should exhibit nothing but the classic Drama, 
would exhibit it to empty seats. They must be corrupt, 
to live; and those who attend them will be corrupted. 

Let me turn your attention to several reasons which 
should incline every young man to forswear such criminal 
amusements. 

I. The first reason is. their waste of time. I do not 
mean that they waste only the time consumed while you 
are within them; but they make you waste your time 
afterwards. You will go once, and wish to go again ; 
you will go twice, and seek it a third time ; you will go a 
third time. — a fourth ; and whenever the bill flames, you 
will be seized with a restlessness and craving to go, until 
the appetite will become a passion. You will then waste 
your nights : your mornings being heavy, melancholy, 
and stupid, you will waste them. Your day will next be 
confused and crowded : your duties poorly executed or 
deferred ; habits of arrant shiftlessness will ensue : and 
day by day, industry will grow tiresome, and leisure 



POPULATE A1MTUSEMENTS. 143 

sweeter, until you are a waster of time — an idle man ; 
and if not a rogue, you will be a fortunate exception. 

II. You ouglit not to countenance these things, because 
they ivill waste your money. Young gentlemen ! squan- 
dering is as shameful as hoarding. A fool can throw 
away, and a fool can lock up ; but it. is a wise man, who, 
neither parsimonious nor profuse, steers the middle course 
of generous economy and frugal liberality. A young 
man, at first, thinks that all he spends at such places, is 
the ticket-price of the Theatre, or the small bet on the 
races ; and this he knows is not much. But this is cer- 
tainly not the whole bill — nor half. 

First, you pay your entrance. But there are a thousand 
petty luxuries which one must not neglect, or custom will 
call him niggard. You must buy your cigars, and your 
friend's. You must buy your juleps, and treat in your 
turn. You must occasionally wait on your lady, and she 
must be comforted with divers confections. You cannot 
go to such places in homely working dress ; new and 
costlier clothes must be bought. All your companions 
have jewelry, — you will want a ring, or a seal, or a 
golden watch, or an ebony cane, a silver toothpick, or 
quizzing glass. Thus, item presses upon item, and in the 
year a long bill runs up of money spent for little trifles. 

But if all this money could buy you off from the yet 
worse effects, the bargain would not be so dear. But 
compare, if you please, this mode of expenditure with the 
principle of your ordinary expense. In all ordinary and 
business-transactions you get an equivalent for your money, 
— either food for support, or clothes for comfort, or per- 
manent property. But when a young man has spent one 
or two hundred dollars for the Theatre, Circus, Races, 
Balls, and revelling, what has he to show for it at the end 
of the 3 ear? Nothing at all good, and much that is bad. 
You sink your money as really as if you threw it into the 
sea; and you do it in such a way that you form habits of 
careless expense. You lose all sense of the value of 
property ; and when a man sees no value in property, he 
will see no necessity for labor ; and when he is lazy, and 
careless of property, both, he will be dishonest. Thus, a 
habit which seems innocent — the habit of trifling with 



144 LECTUKES TO YOUNG MEN. 

property — often degenerates to worthlessness indolence, 
and roguery. 

III. Such pleasures are incompatible with your ordi- 
nary pursuits. 

The very way to ruin an honest business is to be 
ashamed of it, or to put alongside of it something which 
a man loves better. There can be no industrial calling 
so exciting as the Theatre, the Circus, and the Races. If 
you wish to make your real business very stupid and 
hateful, visit such places. After the glare of the Theatre 
has dazzled your eyes, your blacksmith-shop will look 
smuttier than ever it did before. After you have seen 
stalwart heroes pounding their antagonists, you will find 
it a dull business to pound iron ; -and a valiant ap- 
prentice who has seen such gracious glances of love and 
such rapturous kissing of hands, will hate to dirty his 
heroic ringers with mortar, or by rolling felt on the 
hatter's board. If a man had a homely, but most useful 
wife — patient, kind, intelligent, hopeful in sorrow, and 
cheerful in prosperity, but yet very plain, very homely, 
— would he be wise to bring under his roof a fascinating 
and artful beauty ? would the contrast, and her wiles, 
make him love his own wife better ? Young gentlemen, 
your wives are your industrial callings? These raree- 
shows are artful jades, dressed up on purpose to purloin 
your affections. Let no man be led to commit adultery 
w'tli a Theatre, against the rights of his own trade. 

IV. Another reason why you should let alone these 
deceitful pleasures is, that they will engage you in bad 
company. To the Theatre, the Ball, the Circus, the 
Race-course, the gaming-table, resort all the idle, the dis- 
sipated, the rogues, the licentious, the epicures, the glm- 
tons, the artful jades, the immodest prudes, the joyous, 
the worthless, the refuse. When you go, you will not, 
at first, take introduction to them all, but to those nearest 
like yourself; by them the way will be opened to others. 
And a very great evil has befallen a young man, when 
wicked men feel that they have a right to his acquaint- 
When I see a gambler slapping a young mechanic 

on the back ; or a lecherous scoundrel suffusing a young 
man's cheek by a story at which, despite his blushes, he 
xi't laughs; I know the youth has been guilty of criminal 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 145 

indiscretion, or these men could not approach him thus. 
That is a brave and strong heart that can stand up pure 
in a company of artful wretches. When wicked men 
mean to seduce a young man, so tremendous are the odds 
in favor of practiced experience against innocence, that 
there is not one chance in a thousand, if the young man 
lets them approach him. Let every young man remem- 
ber that he carries, by nature, a breast of passions just 
such as bad men have. With youth they slumber ; but 
temptation can wake them, bad men can influence them ; 
they know the road, they know how to serenade the 
heart ; how to raise the sash, and elope with each pas- 
sion. There is but one resource for innocence among 
men or women ; and that is, an embargo upon all com- 
merce of bad men. Bar the window ! — bolt the door ! — 
nor answer their strain, if thoy charm never so wisely ! 
In no other way can you be safe. So well am I assured 
of the power of bad men to seduce the erring purity of 
man, that I pronounce it next to impossible for man or 
woman to escape, if they permit bad men to approach and 
dally with them. Oh ! there is more than magic in 
temptation, when it beams down upon the heart of man, 
like the sun upon a morass ! -At the noon-tide hour of 
purity, the mists shall rise and wreath a thousand fantastic 
forms of delusion ; and a sudden freak of passion a sin- 
gle gleam of the imagination, one sudden rush of the ca- 
pricious heart, and the resistance of years may be pros- 
trated in a moment, the heart entered by the besieging 
enemy, its rooms sought out, and every lovely affection 
rudely seized by the invader's lust, and given to ravish- 
ment and to ruin ! 

V. Putting together in one class, all gamblers, circus- 
riders, actors, and racing-jockeys, I pronounce them to 
be men who live off of society without returning any use- 
ful equivalent for their support. At the most lenient 
sentence, they are a band of gay idlers. They do not 
throw one cent into the stock of public good. They do 
not make shoes, or hats, or houses, or harness, or any- 
thing else that is useful. A hostler is useful ; he per- 
forms a necessary office. A scullion is useful ; somebody 
must act his part. A street-sweeper, a chimney-sw r eep, 
the seller of old clothes, a scavenger, a tinker, a boot- 
10 



146 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

black — all these men are respectable ; for though their 
callings are very humble, they are founded on the real 
wants of society. The bread which such men eat, is the 
representation of what they have done for society ; not 
the bread of idleness, but of usefulness. But what do 
pleasure-mongers do for a living ? — what do they invent? 
— what do they make ? — what do they repair ? — what do 
they for the mind, for the body, for man, or child, or 
beast ? The dog that gnaws a refuse bone, pays for it in 
barking at a thief. The cat that purrs its gratitude for a 
morsel of meat, will clear our house of rats. But what 
do we get in return for supporting whole loads of play- 
mongers, and circus-clow r ns ? They eat, they drink, they 
giggle, they grimace, they strut in garish clothes — and 
what else ? They have not afforded even useful amuse- 
ment ; they are professional laugh-makers ; their trade is 
comical or tragical buffoonery — the trade of tickling men. 
Ws do not feel any need of them, before they come ; and 
when they leave, the only effects resulting from their 
visits are, unruly boys, aping apprentices, and unsteady 
workmen. 

Now, upon principles of mere political economy, is it 
wise to support a growing class of improvident idlers ? If 
at the top of society, the government should erect a class 
of favored citizens, and pamper their idleness with fat 
pensions, the indignation of the whole community would 
break out against such privileged aristocrats. But we 
have, at the bottom of society, a set of wandering, jesting, 
dancing, fiddling aristocrats, whom we support for the 
sake of their capers, grins, and caricatures upon life, and 
no one seems to think this an evil. 

VI. But even this is cheap and wise, compared with 
the evil which I shall mention. If these morality-teach- 
ers could guarantee us against all evil from their doings, 
we might pay their support and think it a cheap bargain. 
The direct and necessary effect of their pursuit, however, 
is to demoralize men. 

Those who defend Theatres would scorn to admit ac- 
tors into their society. It is within the knowledge of all, 
that men, w r ho thus cater for public pleasure, are excluded 
from respectable society. The general fact is not altered 
by the exceptions — and honorable exceptions there are. 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 147 

But where there is one Siddons, and one Ellen Tree, and 
one Fanny Kemble, how many hundred actresses are 
there who dare not venture within modest society? 
Where there is one Garrick and Sheridan, how many 
thousand licentious wretches are there, whose acting is 
but a means of sensual indulgence? In the support of 
gamblers, circus-riders, actors, and racing-jockeys, a 
Christian and industrious people are guilty of supporting 
mere mischief-makers — men whose very heart is diseased, 
and whose sores exhale contagion to all around them. 
We pay moral assassins to stab the purity of our chil- 
dren. We warn our sons of temptation, and yet plant 
the seeds which shall bristle with all the spikes and 
thorns of the worst temptation. If to this strong lan- 
guage, you answer, that these men are generous and 
jovial, that their very business is to please, that they do 
not mean to do harm, — I reply, that I do not charge 
them with trying to produce immorality, but with pursu- 
ing a course which produces it, whether they try or not. 
An evil example does harm by its own liberty, without 
asking leave. Moral disease, like the plague, is conta- 
gious, whether the patient wishes it or not. A vile man 
infects his children in spite of himself. Criminals make 
criminals, just as taint makes taint, disease makes dis- 
ease, plagues make plagues. Those who run the gay 
round of pleasure cannot help dazzling the young, con- 
founding their habits, and perverting their morals — it is 
the very nature of their employment. 

These demoralizing professions could not be sustained 
but by the patronage of moral men. Where do the 
clerks, the apprentices,' the dissipated, get their money 
which buys an entrance ? From whom is that money 
drained, always, in every land, which supports vice? 
Unquestionably from the good, the laborious, the careful. 
The skill, the enterprise, the labor, the good morals of 
every nation, are always taxed for the expenses of vice. 
Jails are built out of honest men's earnings. Courts are 
supported from peaceful men's property. Penitentiaries 
are built by the toil of virtue. Crime never pays its own 
way. Vice lias no hands to work, no head to calculate. 
Its whole faculty is to corrupt and to waste ; and good 
men, directly or indirectly, foot the bill. 



148 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

At this time, when we are waiting in vain for the re- 
turn of that bread which we wastefully cast upon the 
waters ; when, all over the sea, men are fishing up the 
wrecks of those argosies, and full freighted fortunes, 
which foundered in the sad storm of recent times, — some 
question might be asked about the economy of vice ; the 
economy of paying for our sons' idleness ; the economy 
of maintaining a whole lazy profession of gamblers, racers, 
actresses, and actors, — human, equine and belluine : — 
whose errand is mischief, and luxury, and license, and 
giggling folly. It ought to be asked of men who groan 
at a tax to pay their honest foreign debts, whether they 
can be taxed to pay the bills of mountebanks?* 

It is astonishing how little the influence of those pro- 
fessions has been considered, which exert themselves 
mainly to delight the sensual feelings of men. That 
whole race of men, whose camp is the Theatre, the Cir- 
cus, the Turf, or the Gaming-table, is a race whose in- 
stinct is destruction, who live to corrupt, and live off of 
the corruption which they make. For their support, we 
sacrifice annual hecatombs of youthful victims. Even 

* We cannot pay for honest loans, but we can pay Elssler hundreds 
of thousands for being an airy sylph ! America can pay vagabond- 
fiddlers, strumpet-dancers, fashionable actors, dancing-horses, and 
boxing-men ! Heaven forbid that these should want !— but to pay 
honest debts,— indeed, indeed, we have honorable scruples of con- 
science about that ! ! 

Let our foreign creditors dismiss their fears, and forgive us the 
commercial debt: write no more drowsy letters about public faith ; 
let them write spicy comedies, and send over fiddlers, and dancers, 
and actors, and singers :— they will soon collect the debt and keep us 
good-natured! After every extenuation— hard times, deficient cur- 
renc5\ want of market. &c, there is a deeper reason than these at the 
bottom of our inert indebtedness. Living among the body of the peo- 
ple,' and having nothing to lose or gain by my opinions, I must say 
plainly, that the community are not sensitive to the disgrace of fla- 
grant public bankruptcy: they do not seem to care whether their pub- 
lic debt be paid or not. I perceive no enthusiasm on that subject: it 
is not a topic for either party, nor of anxious private conversation. 
A profound indebtedness, ruinous to our credit and to our morals, is 
allowed to lie at the very bottom of the abyss of dishonest indiffer- 
ence. 

Men love to be taxed for their lusts: there is an open exchequer for 
licentiousness, and for giddy pleasure. We grow suddenly saving, 
when benevolence asks alms, or justice duns for debts ; we dole a pit- 
tance to suppliant creditors, to be rid of their clamor. But let the di- 
vine Fanny, with evolutions extrenielv efficacious upon the feelings, 
fire the enthusiasm of a whole Theatre of men. whose applauses rise- 
as she does: let this courageous dancer, almost literally true to na- 
ture, display her adventurous feats before a thousand men, and the 
very miser will turn spendthrift; the land which will not pay its honest 
creditors, will enrich a strolling danseuse, and rain down upon the 
stage a stream of golden boxes, or golden coin, wreaths and rosy bil- 
let-doux. 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 149 

sober Christian men, look smilingly upon the gairish out- 
side of these train-bands of destruction ; and while we 
see the results to be, uniformly, dissipation, idleness, dis- 
honesty, vice and crime, still they lull us with the lying 
lyric of " classic drama,"" and " humam life" " morality,"- 
"poetry," and " divine comedy." 

Disguise it as you will, these men of pleasure are the 
world over, corrupters of youth. Upon no principle 
of kindness can we tolerate them ; no excuse is bold 
enough ; we can take bail from none their weaknesses — 
it is not safe to have them abroad even upon excessive 
bail. You might as well take bail of lions, and allow 
scorpions to breed in our streets for a suitable license ; or 
for a tax indulge assassins. Men whose life is given to 
evil pleasures are, to ordinary criminals, what a univer- 
sal pestilence is to a local disease. They fill the air, per- 
vade the community, and bring around every youth an 
atmosphere of death. Corrupters of youth have no miti- 
gation of their baseness. Their generosity avails nothing, 
their knowledge nothing, their varied accomplishments 
nothing. These are only so many facilities for greater 
evil. Is a serpent less deadly, because his burnished 
scales shine ? Shall a dove praise and court the vulture, 
because he has such glossy plumage? The more ac- 
complishments a bad man has, the more dangerous is he 5 
they are the garlands which cover up the knife with w T hich 
he will stab. There is no such thing as good corrupters. 
You might as well talk of a mild and pleasant murder, a 
very lenient assassination, a grateful stench, or a pious 
devil. We denounce them ; for it is our nature to loathe 
perfidious corruption. We have no compunction to with- 
hold us. We mourn over a torn and bleeding lamb ; but 
who mourns the wolf which rent it ? We weep for de- 
spoiled innocence ; but who sheds a tear for the savage 
fiend who plucks away the flower of virtue? We shudder 
and pray for the shrieking victim of the Inquisiton ; but 
who would spare the hoary Inquisitor, before whose 
shriveled form the piteous maid implores relief in vain ? 
Even thus, we palliate the sins of generous youth ; and 
their downfall is our sorrow : but for their destroyers, for 
the corrupters of youth, who practise the infernal 
chemistry of ruin, and dissolve the young heart in vice — 



150 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

we have neither tears, nor pleas, nor patience. We lift 
our heart to Him who beareth the iron rod of vengeance, 
and pray for the appointed time of judgment. Ye mis- 
creants ! think ye that ye are growing tall, and walking 
safely, because God hath forgotten ? The bolt shall yet 
smite you ! you shall be heard as the falling of an oak in 
the silent forest — the vaster its growth, the more terrible 
its resounding downfall ! Oh ! thou corrupter of 
youth ! I would not take thy death, for all the pleasure 
of thy guilty life, a thousand fold. Thou shalt draw near 
to the shadow of death. To the Christian, these shades 
are the golden haze which heaven's light makes, when it 
meets the earth and mingles with its shadows. But to 
thee, these shall be shadows full of phantom-shapes. 
Images of terror in the Future shall dimly rise and 
beckon ; — the ghastly deeds of the Past shall stretch out 
their skinny hands to push thee forward ! Thou shall not 
die unattended. Despair shall mock thee. Agony shall 
tender to thy parched lips her fiery cup. Remorse shall 
feel thy heart, and rend it open. Good men shall breathe 
freer at thy death, and utter thanksgiving when thou art 
gone. Men shall place thy grave-stone as a monument 
and testimony that a plague is stayed ; no tear shall wet 
it, no mourner linger there ! And, as borne on the blast 
thy guilty spirit whistle toward the gate of hell, the 
hideous shrieks of those whom thy hand hath destroyed, 
shall pierce thee — hell's first welcome. In the bosom of 
that everlasting storm which rains perpetual misery in hell, 
shalt thou, corrupter of youth ! be forever hidden from 
our view : and may God wipe out the very thoughts of 
thee from our memory. 



THE EJ5?*" 



